


A Pale And Pointed Mirror

by Musyc



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Betrayal, Character Death, Community: dmhgficexchange, Draco Malfoy - character, EWE, F/M, Hermione Granger - character, Murder, Mystery, Post-War, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-27
Updated: 2009-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-03 20:40:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 42,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Musyc/pseuds/Musyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone is killing Death Eaters and Draco is at risk. Hermione must identify the murderer and save Draco's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**ONE**

Beneath the stone bridge, crumbled with both time and neglect, the rats prowled over soggy cardboard boxes with blurred and runny ink, through piles of stained and mildewed rags that at one point could have been clothing, into rotted and moldy fruits that gave off a smell as sweet and gut-turning as the death they'd come to investigate. It was a scene Hermione Granger had examined too many times, a view she'd had so often that she no longer even noticed it. Her focus was reserved for the dark lump in the shadows, the outflung extremity, blackened and twisted into a claw. She stepped forward, kicking a rat out of her way to squeal into the darkness with its eyes gleaming beady and red - a shiver ran down her spine at a distant memory - then crouched beside the pile of black rags. The smell of burnt flesh was weak, and she shook her head as she pulled her wand from a sheath on her arm, casting a small ball of light to float over her head before she prodded at the body.

"Dead for days," she muttered to herself, shaking her head again and lifting various bits of robe with the tip of her wand. They crumbled and flaked as she searched, ash floating away on her breath, exhaled sharply to keep from pulling bits of corpse into her lungs. With a mumbled _Locomotor_ charm, she rolled the body, watching dispassionately as beetles and maggots squirmed away from the light and the loss of their meal. The roll left the body sprawled, limbs flung wide with abandon, and she focused on the left arm.

Under ashen robes and charred skin, the Mark was almost invisible, faded and broken like every other one she'd seen since Voldemort's death. But it was there, and she moved her wand to the body's head, pushing back the hood of the robe. The corpse's hair had been burnt away, the features twisted in a death rictus, most of the flesh already consumed by the insect larvae that always flocked to a death. Nothing recognizable, not immediately. Her lashes fluttered, and she stood, cleaning her wand off with a swipe on her robe's sleeve before tucking it back into its sheath.

Footsteps squelched up behind her, a muffled curse preceding the sound of something being stomped off a shoe. "Just once," a deep voice said, "I'd appreciate it if they'd leave their bodies in a nice park somewhere. Maybe under a bush that actually smells less like mold. With fewer rats. Who is it?"

She gestured sharply at the body, her hand cutting through the air like a knife. "You tell me."

Blaise Zabini stepped up beside her, staring down at the body with a grimace that wrinkled his nose. "Yaxley, Avery, Carrows - Amycus, that is - Selwyn...." He rucked up his trousers with a sharp jerk, then crouched and examined the remains. "Looks a little familiar. Could be M--"

"No."

Zabini looked up and over his shoulder, tilting his head at the hard lines of her face, her lips gone thin and white with pressure. "You say that every time. We don't know for sure if he died, you know. One of these days, maybe it's going to be him. Hell, for all we know, he's one of the ones we can't even come _close_ to identifying yet 'cause we don't have enough pieces."

She kicked at another rat, her eyes brightening with morbid amusement when the abrupt movement and the screech of the rat made Zabini scramble to his feet. "He wouldn't be stupid enough to be caught this way."

Zabini avoided her eyes and rubbed one hand over his head, shuffling from foot to foot and trying not to slide on the sodden debris underfoot. "He was stupid enough to join in the first place."

Her nostrils flared, and Zabini stepped back, his heel squishing in the chewed and nibbled rind of a cantaloupe. Her eyes narrowed, the action as glacial as the chill in her voice. "Get the corpse back to HQ, full examination. With your personal attendance."

Zabini's dark skin didn't pale very satisfactorily, even with the wan light of the charm floating overhead, but his eyes went wide and anxious. "No. Oh, c'mon, no. You _know_ how long that takes and I've dinner reservations tonight. Daphne'll kill me if I'm late!"

"_Personal_. Attendance." She waited, staring at him, until Zabini nodded with a reluctant sigh, then turned and stalked off, back straight and shoulders stiff, leaving her charm-light behind. Zabini watched until she Apparated, flicked two fingers at the spot where she'd gone, muttered a curse under his breath when the charm-light disappeared with a pop that almost seemed offended, then turned to take care of the body.

***

Before heading home, she dropped by her office to collect a crate full of files and scrolls, five years of research and notes, vague witness statements and crime scene reports. She'd planned to sneak in and out again, avoiding her department head, but when she stepped into her office, Harvath Giffin was sitting behind her desk, his fingers steepled and his face pointed towards the ceiling. "So," he said, and she closed the office door with a gentle click, cringing while her back was turned. "Found another one."

"Yes, sir. Exactly like the others. Victim left in a secluded locale, corpse burnt." As she spoke, she approached her desk to stand in front of it, her hands clasped behind her back. "Clearly a Death Eater, but we were unable to identify him." Giffin's eyes dropped from the ceiling to her face, and she dug her nails into her palms to keep from flinching, her words stumbling ahead of her thoughts. "Not yet, at least. Zabini's on it. We should have a name fairly soon." Unbidden, her fingers crossed behind her back.

Giffin drummed his fingers together, watching her face, hardly appearing to blink. His voice sounded deeper than normal as he spoke, almost seeming to roll across her shoulders like a slow surf. "Remind me again how many we've located in the past five years."

This time, she did flinch, and she tugged at her necklace, a gift from Ron on their third anniversary. "Fourteen, sir."

"And how many have we identified?"

"One, sir."

"And that was due to the excellent good fortune of?"

She sighed, her head dipping in resignation. "Of there only being two known female Death Eaters, and Lestrange has been dead for years, so it had to be Alecto, sir." She said it all in one breath, and by the end, her words were flat and dull, a repetition of something said so often it had almost lost meaning. Only the body count ever changed, the number growing each time. The reminder of Bellatrix Lestrange brought one hand up to the back of her skull, where the mad witch had gripped her hair and dragged her through the drawing room of Malfoy Manor. Her chest ached and she carefully drew a breath, telling herself that she was alive, that Bellatrix _had_ been dead for years, and that she’d been healed of that torture for a very long time.

Giffin watched her, the stern expression in his eyes fading for just a moment, then stood and walked around her desk, concentrating on her office walls to give her a few moments to compose herself. He stared at the framed awards and commendations from her tenure in the Department of Magical Creatures, the thank-yous and letters of appreciation from representatives of various magical races, including a bit of rare dried seaweed from the Merfolk. Scattered between those, balanced on top of filing cabinets, and tucked into shelves as makeshift bookends, were more frames, these ones filled with photographs. Arthur Weasley holding up a Christmas gift, a variety pack of batteries she'd picked up in a shop on a whim, his face suffused with absolute glee. Luna, with a bracelet made of pebbles and twine, braiding dandelions together for a crown. Neville in formal robes, looking more stunned than the average groom, with Hannah smiling at his side. Seamus, sulking with good humor under a lime-green top hat. Photographs of a life after war, of the proof that even with the horrors inflicted on them, she still had friends, family, and love. She was one of the lucky ones, and she knew it.

Giffin paused at one picture, where three smiling people stood together, arms around each other in a mess of limbs, with a tall, crooked home in the background. Their faces were flushed with sun, laughter, and the bottle of gooseberry wine that a dark-haired man held up with a gesture of triumph. "I would have thought," Giffin said, watching them grin and mug for the camera, "that you would be one of the last ones to care what happens to a bunch of Death Eaters."

"They’re being _murdered_," she said, snapping her chin up and staring at his back. "Hunted down and killed!"

"Just like they did themselves." Giffin turned to look at her, his hands folded behind his back, his robes straining with the movement across a paunch that spoke of his wife’s cooking abilities, celebrated at every office get-together. "They hunted and killed, and left bodies in the shadows. The ones who didn’t die in the war or in Azkaban, they’re dying now. Certainly saving us some paperwork."

Hermione folded her arms across her chest, one foot tapping on the carpet hard enough to make a dull thumping sound despite the padding on the floor. "So? That’s some sort of _justice_, in your mind? They killed people, so it’s all right to kill them? Put down a few sick animals, slaughter some vermin?" Giffin raised his hands to try and stem her rising voice, but Hermione was swiftly reaching full dudgeon and ignored him. "Let’s just go ahead and make a squad dedicated to wiping them out, then! Maybe special robes with special symbols, so everyone knows not to interfere! Kill them in the streets and in their sleep just because of who they are!" She slapped both hands down on her desk, hitting it hard enough to make quills and clips jump on the surface. Her voice, despite the volume, hissed from between her lips. "What makes us _different_ from _them_, in that case?"

"Miss Granger, you are out of order!" The shout made her jerk upright and to attention, her eyes wide and her breathing rough. No matter how old she got and what position she held, being scolded by a superior still made her heart race until she thought it was going to burst. Giffin stared at her, then nodded sharply, just once, apparently satisfied with her mortified silence. "However, you’re right. And I agree with you. But there are plenty of people who don’t, some with extreme influence in the Ministry, and questions are starting to come up about the extent of this project." He sighed and rubbed his forehead, then made a helpless gesture, his shoulders slumping. "And about the cost."

***

It always came down to money, she’d discovered. Giffin had shown her a budget, shown her where she’d gone _over_ that budget a good six months prior, and informed her that unless she could produce some results, identify some bodies, and capture some hunters, and do it swiftly, the entire project would be shut down. "The only reason," he’d said, folding up the parchment and tapping it against his palm, "that we’ve allowed you to run this long is that we received a sizable donation to the department on the expectation that you and your squad be allowed to continue your work."

"Harvath, I _know_. I know exactly where that money came from and why. I'm doing the best I can. I just need more time."

Her boss shook his head at her and sighed. "I can’t stall the Minister much longer. Plenty of rumbles are going on outside, people are getting upset. Hermione, get this done, and fast."

Using her first name was always a sign of his sincerity, or at least as much sincerity as he was capable of displaying after so many years in a position that brought with it so much cynicism, and Hermione contemplated that all the way home, her crate of files clutched to her chest and spreading dust and lint over her robes. It, and his warning, stuck in her mind as she set the crate down on her kitchen table and read the note left rolled up in her favorite tea mug.

_Dinner at Mum’s. She says if you don’t show up, you’re out of the family, and you’ll never get the recipe for her shepherd‘s pie._

She smiled at the note and the three different attempts at properly spelling ‘shepherd’, each poorly scratched out before the writer’s obvious frustration made him give up. After changing from her working robes and capturing her hair back in a thick braid, she took the Floo to the Burrow. Molly wrapped her up in an enthusiastic and somewhat floury hug the second she stepped out of the fireplace, then shooed her off towards the back garden with a big wooden spoon pointed towards the door. "Go on, go on. I’ve everything under control here, Audrey’s helping out."

Hermione poked her head into the kitchen for a quick greeting, raised her eyebrows at Audrey’s enlarged abdomen - good heavens, when had Percy’s wife got _that_ pregnant? - then headed outside just in time to see young Fred charge across the grass after a gnome wearing a sock as a hat, with Angelina in hot pursuit and George slumped over a table and howling with laughter.

"Things never change, do they?" Ron stepped up beside her and slung an arm around her shoulders. "Just as much chaos and terror as always." He pecked her on the cheek and she automatically turned her face towards him for a kiss of greeting, but his eyes were already following the action and he bounded away from her, shouting. "Oi, Fred! Don’t let him into the pumpkins, Mum’ll turn us all into scarecrows!"

Hermione claimed a seat at the end of the wooden table, one hand dropping under the bench to pat Crookshanks, long retired to the Burrow to live out his remaining years with plenty of gnomes to terrorize and all the table scraps he could cadge. Ginny smiled at her from across the table, smiled despite the dark circles under her eyes, one shoulder and her torso covered with a light, Molly-knitted shawl in baby-appropriate shades of lightest red and yellow. Underneath it, a tiny lump squirmed and an even tinier whimper of disquiet emerged, and Ginny shifted little James to her other breast, adjusting the shawl automatically.

"Obviously a Weasley," she said with pride clear in her voice. "He eats constantly. Takes after his uncle." She nodded at Ron, who’d snatched up young Fred and was spinning him around with whooshed and roared broomstick sound effects.

Hermione tried to smile fondly at Ron's antics, but the smile quivered at the edges, and she looked away from Ginny’s questioning glance in a hurry. "So, how’re things at home? Get that nursery finished?" Ginny, distracted as she’d hoped, immediately launched into a detailed explanation of all the changes she’d made and all the plans she still had. Hermione listened with half her attention, nodding and making small comments here and there whenever Ginny paused for breath. The rest of her attention turned inwards, focusing on the perfunctory greeting from Ron and her own response to it.

Or her lack thereof, she admitted to herself. Not only had she not been surprised by it, she hadn’t been disappointed. A kiss that said lovers rather than friends would have been much nicer, but - she stifled a sigh as Ginny went into near-histrionic descriptions of the arguments with Harry over the nursery’s paint scheme - but it didn’t hurt her feelings. She and Ron were drifting through their relationship like owls, passing silently at night and communicating through notes. She took most of the responsibility for it on herself. Her concentration on the Magical Creatures regulations she’d put so many months into, her promotion into MLE and the long hours there, the advice she gave the Ministry on Muggle-friendly legislation - all of it contributed to less and less time at home. And then there were the Death Eater killings.

The murders had been happening since a couple of years after the final battle. At first, it was only one or two per year, and then they halted for several months, and MLE relaxed, thinking it was over. But in the recent months, the killer had started again, the numbers had jumped dramatically, and now they were finding one every few weeks. Harry had pulled a few strings and put her at the head of the team despite her protests. Feigned ones, admittedly, since she couldn’t deny the pleasure of being in charge, and Harry's insistence on her intelligence, research methods, and Muggle-trained viewpoints made a small flutter in her chest whenever she re-read the memo he'd sent out 'requesting' her leadership. Her squad, though - Zabini, Ernie Macmillan, Padma Patil - were getting overworked and overstressed. Macmillan had even taken time off for an ulcer, and Hermione had added his caseload to hers so the others wouldn’t grumble. Still, they had no more leads than when they’d started, and the work was taking its toll on everyone.

On the plus side, she said to herself with a silent, dry laugh, at least they were running out of Death Eaters and at the current rate, they’d be out of work in a year. On the minus side of her mental list, underlined with four exclamation marks behind it, dead Death Eaters meant a failed Hermione, and _that_ was absolutely _un_acceptable.

And that was a fear that could wait until later, possibly until Doomsday came again, because she didn’t want to think about it at all. Fortunately for her spinning thoughts, young Fred shrieked with a scraped knee, Fleur and Victoire floated around from the front of the Burrow with cheek-kisses and apologies for Bill’s absence - "Bill, ’e is in Egypt for a week now, a monster curse, _oui_" - and Audrey and Molly bustled out the back door wearing large oven mitts and carrying even larger trays. The chaos of the Weasley family was, not for the first time, and not for the last, welcome.

***

That evening, she lay in bed, staring at the dark ceiling with her pillow clamped to her ears to block out Ron’s snores. He’d been attentive to her all through dinner, apparently under the impression that she hadn’t noticed Ginny draw him aside for a chat that made him cower as well as Molly could have done. He’d poured her drink without spilling much on her favorite shirt, shared his tomatoes with every display of generosity even though she knew he hated them anyway, and she’d only had to ask him three times to pass the pudding. Practically fawned over her, really, in comparison to how much attention he’d paid since she took the position at MLE. It was almost nice.

If only it hadn’t seemed to translate in his mind as tit for tat, bringing him into their bed to kneel by the headboard with the tip of his penis prodding at her cheek. She fobbed him off with a muttered protest about a sore throat, but the disappointed look on his face made her sigh in her head and offer him the chance to ‘hump like hippogriffs’, his favorite position, her least. The phrase made her shudder every time he said it, especially when he made the little hip-pump he was so fond of adding to the words, and she hated not being able to see his face. It was too impersonal, too much like she was just a _thing_ to him.

And as per usual, even when he wasn't so overexcited as to finish within five minutes, Ron came, collapsed, and lost consciousness almost in one movement, leaving her empty, aching, and sticky with semen drying on her thighs. She'd gone to the loo for a wash, staring at herself in the mirror as she ran a towel under the tap and across her legs. Same bushy brown hair, same brown eyes, same face, same body. There were lines and scars that she'd earned during the war and the years since, but she thought she was still the same woman with the same goals. Thought that most of the time.

The few other times, in the small hours of darkness, when she stared at the ceiling like she was right that moment, she saw a Ministry that still argued and fought with itself over Muggles, pure-bloods, and non-humans. Saw children refuse to play with Teddy because he was half-werewolf in their eyes. Saw Ron giving incredulous, often pitying, looks to her parents' backs when they did the washing-up by hand or complained about the long commute to the office. Her goals hadn't changed, but neither had the world.

She sighed and rolled out of bed, quiet to avoid disturbing Ron even though she knew a herd of Skrewts couldn't wake him after what _he_ thought was good sex. Maybe, she'd considered on occasion, she should give him another book with a few more marked and underlined passages, but after she'd found the last one pressed into use as a draft blocker in the window he swore he'd fix - _Reparo_ was _not_ that complex a charm, and she'd do it herself, but he'd _promised_ \- she hadn't the energy to waste more money on trying.

It was still a few hours to dawn, but she dressed anyway, in warm trousers, practical half-boots, and a high-necked jumper to keep off the chill. Ron liked the flat cool, and she'd lost the last argument over it when she'd filled the flat with a small, contained blizzard, and all he'd said in response was, "Now that's more like it." She put the kettle on and took her crate of files to the upholstered chair near the window. It wasn't the most comfortable place to work, but Ron had taken up most of the room with Quidditch gear and prototypes from the shop, including the Magical Voice-Changing Mask - "Fool And Frighten Your Friends, Dark Lord For A Day", it was a big seller - and with a good lamp, a lap desk, and a touch of an enlargement charm, she made do. She always did.

By the time the kettle whistled at her, she'd laid out all her current files, and she poured the water into a pot of sweet herbal leaves, put pot and mug on a tray, and brought the whole of it to a low table beside her chair. With a preparatory deep breath, she nestled into the chair and got to work.

Two hours passed and the sun had turned the edges of the sky pink before she finished of the last of her tea, a rogue leaf spat back into the mug. For half a second, she thought she saw a figure in the dregs at the bottom of the cup - a twisting, sinuous form, an empty, cold smile - but she banged the cup down hard on the table, muttering "Foolishness" under her breath. Hands tucked into her hair, she leaned over the file she'd been staring at for twenty minutes, and stared at it some more, as if she could forced the words to change and all of it to make sense thought the weight of her gaze alone.

Fourteen dead, only one identified. No other names, no distinguishing marks except those infamous ones. But even a group as secretive and shadowy as the Death Eaters couldn't entirely disappear, one by one, without someone knowing _something_. Of the number of people who'd supported Voldemort's policies and goals - and god knew how many _that_ had been, behind innocent faces and false smiles - less than thirty had been known to be branded as full Death Eaters.

She scrabbled through her files and pulled out a list, names of the Death Eaters who hadn't been killed in the Battle of Hogwarts or died in Azkaban. Only one name, Alecto Carrows, was scratched out entirely, with 'deceased' written beside it in capital letters. Several other names had question marks and scribbled notes - rumors, whispers, and hearsay, for the most part - but one name was underlined, with one small notation next to it. One Death Eater with a definite location, definitely alive. Hermione took a deep breath, then cleaned up the tea things and left a note for Ron.

_Gone to investigate a report. Heading to the office from there, see you tonight._

She tugged a warm cloak on, left the flat quietly, and Apparated to Wiltshire.


	2. Chapter 2

**TWO**

The peacocks had been dead since long before the end of the war, used for targets, Cruciatus practice, and once for a celebratory feast after the Snatchers had caught a few Muggles out alone. The high hedges at the boundaries of the property were overgrown and browning from lack of attention. Fruit rotted on the branch in the orchard, roses laced their thorns together in a thicket that strangled a stone bench. Grass had grown up through the long, curving drive and ivy colonized the windows over more than half of the house. The residents of the small hamlet a few miles to the west all assumed the house to have been abandoned, but no one ever quite seemed willing to go and investigate, despite the rumors that the family who had lived there had been ridiculously rich. Whenever the younger men of the village gathered around pints of lager and ale at the pub in one side of the village's center square, someone always brought up the idea. It was discussed until the pints were emptied and the last round shouted, then everyone shrugged, and said maybe next time, with a few mutters in the background on wasted effort, mutters that always carried the slightest taint of fear and worry hiding under casual tones. The most to happen to the house were a few rocks thrown through the hedges by bored young children on bicycles.

Draco Malfoy had learned to be satisfied with that. The vast majority of the protective enchantments on the house and grounds had broken over the previous years, but a few were still in place, and if all he had to deal with were a couple of hastily- and poorly-aimed pebbles in the hedges from time to time, he could live with it. "Not that you've much choice," he muttered to himself as he stood at the tall window of his bedroom on the north side of the manor. It had the best vantage point over the grounds, and when one of the remaining enchantments had warned him of an Apparition onto the property, he'd gone to look out for the intruder.

Bushy hair, visible only too clearly even from this distance - dear god, did the woman not own a mirror? - gave away her identity, and Draco let the heavy curtain fall over the window, blocking out the early morning light that had managed to push through the ivy. It wasn't the first time Granger had been to his home since the end of the war - his mind shuddered away from remembering the _first_ time she'd been there - as she'd visited several times with that wretchedly ragtag Order to eradicate the last of the Dark Lord's residence, but he hadn't seen her since she'd tried to hug Maddy, his house-elf, and the poor thing had fainted dead on the spot.

He left his room and headed downstairs, snapping his fingers on the way. Maddy appeared instantly at his side, jumping down the steps to keep up with him. "Miss Granger is coming," he informed the elf, watching with dour amusement as Maddy grabbed at and twisted one of her long, pointed ears, distress clear in her bulging eyes. "When she gets to the house, bring her to me. You don't have to be polite about it."

Maddy paused on the stairs and swept him a bow so deep that she had to clutch at the balustrade to keep her balance, then disappeared with a pop. Draco continued to the main floor, gas lamps lighting ahead of him and fading as he passed, domestic magic so commonplace to him that he barely noticed unless it failed. It never had, except when the Dark Lord had been in residence. He passed the door to the drawing room with a shudder and looked away from the light, shimmering evidence of the spell that sealed the door closed permanently. It had taken him two months of slow, surreptitious, and painful spellwork, but no one would walk into that room again.

The reason for the painful portion of that work glinted at him in a mirror at the end of the corridor that led into the study. A wide silver band sat low around his neck, pressed into the base of his throat and peeking out of the collar of his shirt. It represented one of the few choices he'd made entirely on his own since he'd been sixteen. After his mother had saved Potter's life and, as far as he was concerned, ended the war, her participation in the Dark Lord's regime had been forgiven by the Ministry of Magic, her pardon signed by the Minister himself. The Malfoy men had not been quite so fortunate. Lucius was sentenced to Azkaban, though disappeared during transport to the prison. Draco had been told that his father had fallen into the North Sea during a storm, and in the turbid waters there, even a wizard couldn't survive long. Maybe he'd escaped, but if he'd died, Draco was fairly certain Lucius had been pushed. Lucius was the lucky one, Draco considered, reaching up to adjust his collar and hide the band. He'd stayed strong to the end.

Draco'd been weak. His mother's assistance and negotiations with the Ministry had kept him from an immediate execution by Dementor's Kiss, but he'd still needed to suffer for his crimes. Torture, coercion. Unforgivable curses. Involuntary manslaughter, attempted murder. Everything he'd done under his master's orders, all of it demanded that he be sent to Azkaban, probably for life. But Narcissa, the woman who'd saved Potter's life, had pled for his, and because of her part in the war, Draco'd been given a choice. He hadn't taken Dumbledore's offer on the tower, and he'd regretted it since. This time, when given an option, he took it.

Permanent Ministry custody in his home and an inhibitor band on his throat. He wasn't allowed to leave the Manor and he wasn't able to perform more than the most basic charms and cantrips without excruciating pain running along his nerves. He prowled around his house like a Squib aping its betters, working his way through the extensive wine cellars. He'd made his choice - his options for survival were better - and he dealt with it. Reluctantly, and sullenly, but he dealt with it.

And with the Ministry watchdogs and interrogations that accompanied his circumstances. Draco knew of the Death Eaters who'd been dying, who'd been killed and murdered. The Ministry had sent people to ask him if he knew anything, which he didn't. First Zabini, in hopes their former friendship could get him to give up information he didn't have. Then Patil, possibly assuming a pretty face would loosen his tongue. She left in a huff when he demanded a fuck _before_ he'd talk. Macmillan had apparently not had the stomach for the work or some rot like that. Thank god, because he might have begged to be taken to Azkaban if a _Hufflepuff_ had wandered in and tried to ask him impertinent questions. Now they were reduced to sending Granger. Not a friend, former or otherwise, and definitely not an option for a fuck. Maybe they were hoping she could irritate him into helping with their investigation. Their best option, really.

With a good measure of brandy poured into a heavy glass snifter, Draco sprawled into the leather wingbacked chair behind his father's desk. His desk now, and for the past five years, but he still had some anxiety about using it. He hadn't even gone through all the drawers, not wanting to know what he might find, and after he‘d opened one of them in search of a quill and had to have Maddy stitch up his hand when the guard spell on the drawer bit him, he'd been leery of trying since.

He'd just managed to get settled in the chair, his boots up on the desk's polished top, brandy snifter in his right hand and a thin, hand-rolled cigarette in his left, when Maddy escorted Granger into the study. The elf's eyes were full of loathing and her fingers twisted at the edges of the sari-wrapped tablecloth she wore. "The Mudblood with the _hair_ wishes to speak to Master Draco," Maddy informed him, her small and squeaky voice laced with a sullen irritation.

He grinned, his mouth twisting in a wicked grimace, when Granger stomped her foot in obvious aggravation at Maddy’s words. “Thank you, Maddy. You can go.” The elf bowed, turned, and stalked off, accidentally-on-purpose stepping on Granger’s toes on the way through. Draco leaned back in his chair, saluting Granger with his brandy. “So to what do I owe this visit? Sky turn green recently? Red-eyed snake-faced men popping up on the street corners?”

Granger rolled her eyes and jerked her cloak off her shoulders, balling it up in her lap when she took a chair in front of his desk. "Very funny, Malfoy. We found another one yesterday. Don't suppose you've heard anything?"

"Oh, of course, Granger. I got an engraved invitation to go watch, but unfortunately, I was already scheduled to stare at the walls and polish my wand." He sipped at his brandy, his eyes focused on hers, his face tight with the effort of not giving away his reaction through a shift in his expression. The casual, dismissive way she'd said 'another one' rankled at him. First, that she seemed to assume that he'd know what she was talking about and that he'd unwittingly confirmed it with his response. Second, because he _had_ known about it, and _had_ received an invitation. Or a warning, at least.

He tucked his cigarette between his lips and leaned forward, pulling open the only drawer in the desk he trusted, and yanking a thin and grubby parchment out. He shoved it across the desk and Granger picked it up between finger and thumb, eyeing him with some trepidation. "Go on," he grumbled with an exhale of a thick cloud of smoke. "I do occasionally tell the truth and this just happened to be one of those lucky occasions."

Her eyes dropped to the parchment and Draco concentrated on his brandy. He hadn't recognized the handwriting, and the owl that delivered the message dropped dead within minutes of landing, blood trickling from its eyes and beak, its feathers smelling of asphodel. If he didn't know better, he'd have suspected his insane aunt to be behind it, but he'd watched her be buried and he'd spat on her grave.

"Selwyn. The victim." He looked up to see a flash of anger cross through Granger's eyes as she spoke, her words bitten off and sharp. She stabbed at the parchment with one finger, pointing to a name. "It was Selwyn, according to your little _invitation_. He'd been dead for days, we determined that much at the scene. _When_ did you get this?"

Draco shrugged, giving the snifter a twist to set the brandy to twirling around the glass. "Week, maybe."

"And you didn't bother to _inform_ us?" Her voice cracked on the question as she practically shouted it, leaping up from her chair fast enough to knock it over, her hands slamming down onto the desk and her cloak puddling on the floor. She leaned towards him, her hair slithering into her eyes. "You didn't think to tell us that you knew." She flourished the parchment, crumpling it in her fist and pounding the desk again. "You _knew_ Selwyn was the next victim!"

Draco tilted his head and watched her in bemused silence, like she was a pet who'd learned to speak. "I don't own an owl, my Floo has been disconnected, and I'm not allowed to leave the property. I suppose I could have sent a letter through the post, but I appear to be fresh out of stamps. How, pray tell, should I have _informed_ you that I received a note from a madman that may or may not have been true, considering Selwyn may or may not have already been dead?" He took a deep drag off his cigarette and blew a ring directly at her face. "Smoke signals?"

***

After an hour of weak attempts at interrogation and questioning - she refused to accept that the note was all he knew about the murders - Granger left in a whirl of bushy hair, fluttering robes, and muttered imprecations about his ancestors and the inbreeding thereof, half of which Draco had to admit were true. She was accompanied out to the long drive, beyond the boundaries of the property, by Maddy, who was under orders to watch until Granger Disapparated. Draco waited, finishing off his brandy and another cigarette, until Maddy returned and informed him with grave satisfaction that "the Mudblood is gone and good riddance, Master".

"Yes," he said, voice soft and distracted, and he dropped the end of his cigarette, still lit, in Maddy's outstretched hands. She crushed it between her palms, licked ash off her fingers, bowed, and left him. Draco leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled as he thought. The note had come to him, not to the Ministry. He would have assumed that someone killing Death Eaters would want everyone in power to know. It could almost be considered a public service. But the only one informed was a man who'd been sentenced to confinement in his home since he was eighteen. Strange.

_Selwyn lives in the village of Upper Killington,_ the note had read. _Or he will, until tonight. No one has stopped me, and no one _can_ stop me. I will have my revenge._

Draco rose and moved through the Manor, the gloom of the corridors giving way as he entered the south wing. Here, at the rear of the building, with views of the few gardens he insisted the house-elves keep in good condition, were the only windows left uncovered in the entire Manor, the ivy that tried to encroach on the house pulled down and burned at least twice a month. This portion of the house was never permitted to stay in darkness, not anymore.

Draco made his way to a spacious sitting room and to the fireplace at the far end, where a house-elf sat reading to a slender figure wrapped in thick, heavily embroidered robes that were far too large for her slight frame. The elf fell silent at his approach, and he laid his hand on his mother's shoulder. She raised her head, smiling, her eyes focused on nothing at all, and reached up to pat his hand gently. "Winifred told me we had a guest, Draco," she murmured. "Did one of your friends come to visit?"

He hummed an acknowledgement, nodding silently to the elf his mother insisted on calling by that ridiculous name, who stood, bowed, and left with the book tucked under her arm. He claimed the footstool she'd been using, pulling it up next to Narcissa's knees. "Just someone I knew from school. Nothing important." Carefully, he pushed a thin bit of hair back behind her ear, watching her face. Her smile never changed, fixed in a slight quizzical air, even as her eyes failed to track his movements. The left pupil was blown, the right narrowed, and Draco looked away from her face. His father's trial and subsequent sentencing had taken her hard, and she'd suffered a stroke not long after the news of Lucius' disappearance in the North Sea. Despite the best Healers that could be bought, bribed, or threatened, she'd never recovered. Blind, her mind rattled, she floated through the Manor in Lucius' robes, clutching them tight to her chest and waiting for her husband to come home.

At his answer, Narcissa made a soft, disappointed noise, and held her hand out to him. Draco took it, the fine bones in her fingers making her grip feel like an eagle's talons. "You should invite your friends over," she said to the air on Draco's left. "I'm sure your father would appreciate knowing that you've kept in contact with your old schoolmates."

Draco repressed a sigh. Her sight was gone, but her hearing had sharpened to where she could notice even a change in his breathing. For months after his confinement to the Manor, he'd heard her at night, wandering the halls, treading the same path over and over again, pausing at each window with her head tilted towards the glass. "I want to be the first to hear your father come back," she'd told him one night when he'd questioned her gently, and after he'd escorted her to her room, he'd gone to the study, where he'd managed to drink his way through nearly an entire carafe of brandy before he'd broken down.

That he didn't have any friends, and hadn't since the day Crabbe had died, seemed to have slipped her mind, but Draco couldn't bring himself to remind her that a Death Eater wasn't invited to many parties. "Maybe I will, one day," he told her, patting her hand before rising to fetch a warm blanket and settle it across her lap. She smiled, almost in his direction, and he settled at her knees again. "Mum, do you remember if any of Father's old associates had some sort of quarrel with Selwyn? Something quite nasty?"

Narcissa toyed with the fringe on the blanket, smoothing it on her thigh, her head cocked to one side. "No," she said after a long silence, interrupted only by the pop of logs in the fireplace and the softer pop of Winifred's return. "They all had various quarrels with each other, of course. We could hardly avoid that, then. But none with Selwyn specifically. Why?"

Winifred set a glass of warmed cider on a table near Narcissa's elbow, and took her mistress' hand, guiding it to the glass and holding her fingers firmly until Narcissa gripped the cider. Draco almost smiled at the evident care Winifred took, the pride in her bulging eyes when his mother drank without spilling one drop on her chin. "Curious," he said to her question. "Selwyn's dead. I just wondered who might have wanted to kill him."

"Oh." Narcissa paused, the glass held in mid-air with Winifred hovering below to catch if her grasp faltered. Narcissa blinked, then nodded, her expression sharpening out of its usual dreamy calm. "Good. I never liked him. He was very forward with me once and your father was forced to have words with him. I believe that's where he got that limp."

Draco's own expression hardened as he heard the words Narcissa didn't say, understood her implications, and felt a surge of rage running down his spine. Rage at what Selwyn must have tried to do, if Lucius had attacked him, and rage that someone else had killed Selwyn first. Winifred made a small gesture at him, drawing his attention to where he'd curled his fists up in Narcissa's blankets, crushing the fabric in his hands. Carefully, he eased his grip as Winifred piped up her voice at Narcissa's side, reminding his mother that it was exercise time. Draco waved the elf off, rising with Narcissa's hand in his. "Mind if I accompany you to the gardens today, Mum?"

Narcissa's pale face almost glowed as her smile widened more than he'd seen it in months, not since he'd found her on her knees in the garden, her hands and face buried in the blooms of a tall flower bed, the pollen dusting her skin to shine gold in the sun. Lucius had planted the bed during their first year of their marriage, planted it himself without wand or elf, setting her namesake, _Narcissus jonquilla_, in the center of the gardens, and of every flower, shrub, and bush on the grounds, Narcissa loved it best. It had stopped blooming during the war and the Dark Lord's residence, and Narcissa had wept, once, to see it assumedly dead, wept over it when she thought she was alone and away from Draco's eyes, though he'd seen her, heard her, and hated his master just a little more with every tear that dripped off his mother's chin. He'd never spoken of it, but he'd done his damnedest since his confinement to revive the star-shaped, white flowers of the bed and Narcissa's love for it. When it had bloomed again, weakly, pitifully, but bloomed, and he'd found her there, smiling, laughing, and sniffing at the small flowers she could no longer see, he'd ordered the elves into the kitchen and back again, and he and his mother held a tea party beside that bush, Narcissa's laugh making the air sparkle.

She laughed again now, squeezing his hand and throwing off the blanket from across her lap, getting to her feet with a grace that had only slowed over the years, but never faded. "I think I should like that, dearest dragon." He rolled his eyes at the nickname, glad for just a moment that she couldn't see him, but she squeezed his hand again, tutting with a click of her tongue. "Stop that. You're my dragon. Certainly smoke enough to be one, don't think I couldn't smell it on you."

Draco coughed in as best a chagrined manner as he could, overacting his embarrassment for her benefit and amusement. "Sorry, Mum, won't happen again." Winifred grinned up at him, and he put one finger to his lips in a shushing motion.

"Of course it will." Narcissa's voice was fond, and she slid her hand up his sleeve to his elbow, tucking her fingers in the crook of his arm for his escort. He led her out of the sitting room and out of the house, into the early morning sunshine that turned her hair to spun gold.

***

He spent the entire day with Narcissa, a change in his behavior so unusual that he could hear the house-elves whispering in the corridors, Maddy and Winifred peering at him from around corners with their eyes wide and confused. Normally he locked himself away in the study, staring at the wall while he drank yet another bottle of the wine or brandy that the Malfoys and Blacks had accumulated over time. Or he prowled the rooms of the Manor, pacing a wide circuit around the house that led nowhere and meant nothing. He was solicitous of Narcissa, always, making certain that she was comfortable and needed for nothing, but he rarely spent much time with her in total except for their evening meal.

It was too much for him, he'd finally admitted to himself. Too much to see the expressions cross her face whenever one of them encroached on a topic neither wanted to remember, too much to see the hope brighten and fade in her smile each time a creak in the house never turned out to be his father. As much as he loved her, as much as he'd been willing, if unable, to kill for the preservation of her life, he couldn't stand to see what the war had done to her. Couldn't stand to see the proud lines of her face falter over something as simple as the placement of a table that caught her feet and made her stumble. Couldn't stand to see her head bowed and her shoulders shake when her mind was clear and she knew what had become of her husband. Draco supposed that only proved how weak he was, how much of a selfish coward, that he couldn't even bring himself to be there for her pain just in case it brought on his own.

At the end of the day, after he'd escorted Narcissa to her room and bent his neck for a kiss on the forehead that she bestowed on him as regal as a queen, Draco retired to his suite, to the dark woods and the deep greens of a decorating scheme that had been his favorite for so long he might have been sorted into Slytherin just because he already matched the common room. The unaccustomed activity, the walks through the garden, the game of wizard chess with the pieces charmed to tell Narcissa exactly where they were standing and who they wanted to attack, the pretend sulking when Narcissa easily beat him and he muttered to himself about getting his arse kicked by a blind woman just to hear her laughter, all of it, combined with a cessation of smoking for the day, for her sake, had given him a headache, his temples pounding.

Too much time spent in the sun made his skin prickle, and Draco called Maddy to bring him a vial with a light, thin cream in it, a soft liniment to ease the minor irritation of a burn. She held the bottle and a cloth as he stripped off his shirt, dropping both with a gasp when he eased off his sleeves. His brows furrowed and he turned to snarl at her for her clumsiness, but the look of horror in her eyes and the shaking in her hand as she pointed brought him up short, and he stared down at his arm. His eyes widened and his heart thumped, the headache flaring and the muscles in his arm screaming when his hand snapped into a fist. "No," he muttered, his entire body shaking. "Oh god, no."


	3. Chapter 3

**THREE**

Three days later, and Hermione had no more leads than she'd had before. She'd taken the note from Malfoy and hauled it straight to the Ministry for examination and research. First, down to the morgue to put a name to the latest body, the one Zabini had completely failed to identify, and - as the mortician informed her with glee in his face and some very unsettling fluids on the long apron over his robes - apparently didn't even try to, instead skiving off to keep his date with Greengrass. He'd get the grunt work for _that_, she decided. More than he already had.

Next, the note went to the Ministry's criminalistics department, which she'd had to create herself after several weeks of what even she reluctantly had to admit was begging. The Ministry had finally caved, and given her two employees for this department. Unfortunately, they were quite elderly witches with cataracts and palsy, as well as a stubborn insistence on referring to her as Helen. Still, she worked with what she had, and after she'd bought a dozen books on modern techniques, the two witches were no longer forced to rely on guesswork and divination. Honestly, she thought, it was impossible to do a job properly when you tried to solve a crime by waiting for a new moon, putting a holly sprig under your pillow, and dreaming. The worst part of that was how often they were right.

She left the note with them, after creating a copy for herself - rather good spell, she'd always considered, and accurate down to the smallest spatter of ink - and instructed the witches to search for "fingerprints, saliva, hair particles, _any_ DNA evidence at all. I want to know where he bought his parchment, which shop his ink came from, and what type of bird made his quill." Then, of course, came the twenty minute lecture on DNA and what it meant and how it was used in the Muggle world, a talk she had every time and that she was _sure_, one of these days, they'd actually remember. Then, she ensconced herself in her office and set to work.

For the next week, every witness report, every interview, was scrutinized intensely. There _had_ to be something, anything that she'd missed. She barely went home long enough to eat and change clothes. Sleep was optional, and when she really needed it, she transfigured her desk chair into a chaise. She left an apologetic note for Ron - _Very busy, breakthrough at work, see you soon_ \- and pored over her papers and that note. That _note_.

It was impossible, absolutely impossible, that Malfoy had more information about these killings than she did, even if that truly boiled down to just one victim's name. But there was nothing else in any of her files, nothing in a single report. Why, _why_ in the name of anything sacred, would the murderer have sent information to Malfoy, of all people? The man was practically locked in his own house. She ran her hands deep into her hair and gripped her skull, pressing hard on her temples. "Think, Granger, think," she muttered to herself. "There's got to be something here, something you missed."

So intent on staring at the parchment, at first she didn't hear the distant commotion, shouts and running footsteps. When her attention finally switched to it, the shouts were almost outside her door. Anger colored the voices she could hear, and she rose from her desk, going to her door and pressing her ear to it. Underneath the anger, she could almost identify fear, and that worried her. There should be very little that MLE would fear these days, barring a werewolf uprising or a giant attack, so why was there shouting?

She opened the door, just a touch, and peeked through the crack she'd created. Giffin stood in the center of a knot of people, his arm around the shoulders of a wizard dressed in the uniform of an Azkaban guard. "Silence!" Giffin waved his wand and sent harmless, but attention-grabbing, sparks over the gathered wizards and witches. "Come on, Tasse. What _happened_?"

The wizard straightened up, and several people in the crowd gasped at the haggard look on his face, the tears and rents in his robes. Tasse's eyes were sunken and dark, and he swallowed hard, licking his lips before he spoke in a whisper that Hermione was too far away to hear. She heard the shrieks and shouts from the listeners, though, heard the fear that sped through the crowd, and heard them repeating the news to each other in voices that shook and trembled. She closed her door and leaned her head against it, fighting for breath with her fingers touching the scar on her throat.

Riot in Azkaban. Prisoners escaped.

***

The Ministry went on high alert, all members of MLE were called in, and the _Prophet_ was put on strict instruction _not_ to mention the breakout, which they immediately ignored. The morning after Tasse's frantic report, an article appeared on the riots and the escaped Death Eaters, with an accompanying editorial about the freedom of the press. Damned American they'd hired, Giffin grumbled when a Ministry intern accidentally left a copy of the paper in the men's loo despite MLE's concerted efforts to hide the article from him.

At least they'd managed to keep the most crucial detail out of the journalists' grabby hands. Seven Death Eaters had been incarcerated in Azkaban. Three died in the riot, and those three - Rowle, Travers, and Crabbe - died with their Marks intact. Frighteningly intact. After Voldemort's death, the Marks had faded and broken on all known Death Eaters, gone blue and blurred as if decades old, the magic that created and activated them shattered with the downfall of their master. But on the three bodies that Hermione and her team examined, the Marks were black and solid, looking almost fresh under the injuries and damage of the men's deaths.

There was something off about the Marks, something that didn't seem quite right beyond their sudden reappearance. Hermione had photographs made and enlarged for detail, and she did her best to identify what was odd about the dark tattoos on the three dead men. The only Mark she'd seen up close before had been on Bellatrix, when that woman had tortured her in Malfoy's home. _That_ Mark she still saw in her nightmares, nightmares that had fortunately faded over the years, but even with the way it was such an important part of her memories, she couldn't remember it well enough to pinpoint the change. It aggravated her, setting her to pacing her office with a photograph held up before her eyes, scanning every inch of the picture over and over again.

She assigned Patil to criminalistics with the two elderly witches, hoping her younger eyes and analytic skills would pull something off the note from Malfoy, and set Macmillan to interviewing the inmates of Azkaban - those with most of their sanity still in place - to see if there was any clue to the riot and the impetus behind it. Zabini, back in her good graces solely because she needed her entire team, joined up with the Hit Wizards and took on the task of locating family members of the escaped Death Eaters, setting watches on their homes and businesses in case one or more of the escapees should attempt to make contact.

_She_ obsessed over the Marks, sketching them, examining the bodies, scrutinizing the photographs with a magnifying spell. She came to the conclusion that she needed to talk to someone who knew the Marks intimately, who could look at the photos and tell her where the difference lay. Her first impulse, she rejected, and she went to Harry, busy in the Auror's office with organizing the Hit Wizards and avoiding the dozens of owls and Howlers that arrived after the _Prophet_'s article, imploring him to save the world again. He tried to give her what assistance he could with the photos, even using a Pensieve to make a thorough examination of his memories, but wasn't much help. Most of what he remembered involved Voldemort, less of Voldemort's servants and their arms.

"You know who's _got_ one, Hermione," he told her when she cradled the Pensieve dejectedly. "And you know where he is, and if I know you, you thought of him first thing. Go ask Malfoy."

"Don't want to," she muttered, feeling immediately guilty at the sharp look Harry gave her. Duty, responsibility, and the insistent need to solve a problem all circled in her mind. She sighed, reluctant and rueful. "He's rude, obnoxious, and his house-elf calls me 'that Mudblood'. Plus he's withheld information from us once already. He probably won't even talk to me."

"When's that ever stopped you from sticking your nose in?" Harry muttered it, mostly under his breath, but not enough to keep her from hearing. She glared at him, thumped the Pensieve down on his desk, and stormed out of his office.

***

While standing outside the Manor, Hermione stared up at the building, her mouth in a frown. If possible, the ivy had grown even thicker since she'd been there just a handful of days before, and the trees seemed even thinner and more dreary. How Malfoy handled living in these bleak surroundings, she couldn't imagine. No light, no movement, no joy - it must be desolate. "Not that he doesn't deserve worse," she told herself with a huffy straightening of her robes and a firm grasp on her expression. "The prat." The pop of Apparition followed her words and she looked down to see a house-elf scowling at her. Maddy, that was her name.

"Master Draco is not accepting Mudblood guests," the elf informed her with every display of cheery malice, and Hermione took a step back to protect her toes.

"Well, _Master_ Draco has no choice. Part of his agreement with the Ministry is that he must allow entry to Ministry representatives on business." Leaning down to the elf's level, Hermione sucked on her teeth and stared at Maddy's eyes. "Or would _Master_ Draco prefer to give up the comfort of his own home for the hospitality of Azkaban?"

Maddy scowled further, baring yellowed teeth, and spun on her heel, trudging up to the house without looking to see if Hermione was following. She was, and she followed Maddy into the house and to the study she'd visited last time, silently scolding herself the whole way for what she'd just said. The elf couldn't help how she'd been enslaved and trained by the Malfoys, and it had been unkind of her to make that threat. She hadn't meant to do that. She'd _meant_ to use it on Malfoy himself if he proved recalcitrant.

Which, it seemed, he was going to be, since he was nowhere in sight and Maddy had already disappeared before she could be asked to fetch her master. Hermione huffed and decided to wait him out. If he thought he could be stubborn, he'd obviously never gone up against her in _that_ department, and she wasn't leaving without a few answers. Tossing her cloak over one of the chairs in front of Malfoy's desk, she looked around the room. Large desk, upholstered chairs, bookcases full of Dark texts. At least she assumed they were, until she stepped closer and actually took a look at them. Novels, for the most part, and well-read ones. That surprised her. She'd never thought of either Lucius or Draco as much of a reader, and this looked like a man's study. Maybe Narcissa had run out of room on her own shelves.

Hermione half-expected some sort of secret compartment to open up when she pulled one book off the shelf. That seemed the sort of thing that should happen in that house, but then, she reminded herself with a quietly bitter laugh, the Manor did have them, and they were all in the drawing room, under the floor. She would know, since she'd helped MLE empty several after the war ended. Why anyone needed that many Dark artifacts, she'd never be able to understand. She flipped through the book, idly scanning the pages. An underlined passage caught her eyes and she bent her head over the book, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear to keep it out of her eyes. Whoever had marked this passage was a bit of a romantic, which only made her certain the books belonged to Narcissa. She turned to the beginning and started to read.

Engrossed in the story, she lost track of time and her surroundings, until a sharp crash that shook the wall made her jump, almost dropping the book as she spun around. No one was there, but a few feet away, there was a crack in the wall. A closer look showed it to be too even and straight to be just a crack. It was a door that had been jarred open, and she felt the hair rise on the back of her neck.

Secret compartments, secret rooms.

She marked her place in the book and quietly slid it back onto the shelf, then pulled her wand from the sheath on her arm. With it firm in her grasp, a Stunning spell at the front of her mind, she approached the door. Pushing it open slowly would only give whoever was on the other side more chance to prepare an attack, she thought, so she stood to one side, shoved it open with her foot, and leveled her wand.

Nothing happened. She peered around the edge of the frame cautiously, and saw Maddy kneeling on the floor next to an overturned sofa. Stretched out beside it was a body in long, heavy robes, and for a moment, she thought the house-elf had gone mad and killed Malfoy. The thought both horrified her and made her a little proud - to think a house-elf could throw off its own master's shackles _that_ well - then the body stirred and made a soft groan, and Hermione rushed forward, scolding herself for the thought as she knelt opposite Maddy.

It _was_ Malfoy, hair unkempt, robes askew, his sharp features even sharper with the gaunt look of his cheeks. Malfoy looked like he'd lost weight since she'd seen him last, like he hadn't had a solid meal in days. He made another soft groan, and she grimaced, wrinkling her nose. From the smell of him, she was right, and all his meals had been liquid. "Maddy, what happened?"

For once, the house-elf appeared to have forgotten any antagonism towards her in concern for Malfoy. Hermione watched with confusion and no little surprise as Maddy turned Malfoy's head and patted his cheeks gently. "Master is all right, yes?" she murmured to him. Malfoy's eyelids twitched and the house-elf gave a small sigh of relief, brushing Malfoy's hair back from his face. She looked up to Hermione, her bulging eyes even more watery than usual for her kind, watery with what Hermione was shocked to see were tears. "Master Draco has not had a good week," she informed Hermione, her long, gnarled hands still moving on his hair. "Maddy tried to keep him away from the brandy, but he banished her to the kitchens yesterday." She looked down and tears tracked over her wrinkled cheeks as she whispered. "Maddy will punish herself for disobeying, Master."

"You will _not_." The house-elf jumped at the determination in Hermione's voice. "You absolutely will not punish yourself. He _clearly_ needs help. He smells like he's been drunk for days. Is this the first time he's passed out?" Maddy shook her head, her huge ears flapping against her skull, and Hermione's lips tightened. "Right. We'll put him to bed, then. At least get him off the floor."

She readied her wand, but Maddy was already up and snapping her fingers. Malfoy lifted into the air, coming to hover over Maddy's raised arms. "If the Mudblood would just fix the sofa?" She nodded towards the heavy piece of furniture Malfoy had knocked over in his fall.

Hermione got to her feet without bothering to protest the insult. There were more important things to worry about than a house-elf's unfortunate vocabulary. Malfoy didn't appear to be injured, beyond a good-sized lump on his head, but while he was floating over Maddy's hands, she took the opportunity to examine him quickly. She hesitated over the silver band around his throat, and she tried to get her fingers under it to be certain he could breathe. It was too tight to reach beneath, but he didn't seem to be having trouble, so she abandoned it to run her fingers down his ribs and limbs. Nothing appeared broken, though he gave a sharp cry when she touched his left arm. Maddy whimpered and her arms shook. "_Please_, Miss!"

Miss. The polite word, the frantic worry in that _please_, twisted a knot in Hermione's chest. She scrambled to right the sofa and Maddy gently lowered Malfoy onto it, arranging him with care. With extra care not to touch his arm above the wrist, Hermione noted. That, plus the cry he'd made, plus his drunkenness, added up to Hermione's eyes narrowing. She knelt beside the sofa and unfastened Malfoy's cuff to push his sleeve up. The black tattoo stared up at her, the skull and snake just as dark on his arm as it was on the three bodies in the Ministry's morgue. Maddy keened softly and Hermione looked over to see the house-elf standing with her hands over her eyes, her small body quivering from pointed ears to bare toes. Hermione kept her voice soft, pitying the poor creature's emotional upheaval. "Is this why he's drunk?" she asked, pointing at Malfoy's arm when Maddy peeked through her fingers.

The house-elf gulped and nodded quickly. "Master says. He says." Her shoulders curled and she stomped both feet. "Maddy mustn't! But Master needs help." She straightened up and twisted her ear in both hands. "Master says enough brandy silences the call, and Master is scared to answer."

Hermione blinked, her heart pounding. The call. The _call_. She passed her fingers in the air over the Mark, afraid to touch it, remembering how Voldemort's servants had contacted their master - and how _he_ had demanded their attendance at his side. Hermione dropped her head into her hands, shaking. The Marks, the riots, the murdered Death Eaters. "Oh, _no_."

***

She paced around a garden at the rear of the Manor, her hands wringing at the sleeves of her robes. She'd helped Maddy put Malfoy to bed, or tried to, at least. The house-elf had put up such a fuss at the very idea of her setting foot in his room - "Master would kill himself just so he could roll over in his grave!" - that she'd backed away, after instructing Maddy to sober him up and inform him she was there. Then she’d fled. Turned around and lost in the corridors of the large house, her thoughts whirling as pieces and clues fitted together in her mind, she'd seen a door open to the outside, sunshine pouring in, and she'd bolted through it.

The garden was lovely, well-selected blooms still giving it plenty of color and beauty even that late in the year. It was a dramatic change from the gloom inside the house, and as she paced, Hermione tried to focus on the bright cheer of the garden and reconcile it with what she remembered and knew of the Malfoys. It didn't fit, and it didn't distract her enough from what she'd seen on Malfoy's arm, and what that meant.

It _couldn't_ be. Voldemort was dead, Harry'd killed him. Well, the curse had, but it boiled down to the same thing. Voldemort was gone, his power was broken, his servants were scattered. It _couldn't_ be.

She turned around and almost stumbled over a diminutive figure in her path, but caught herself with the smallest of shrieks and a tiny hop backwards. "Maddy," she said, then stopped herself from going further. This house-elf was wearing a tablecloth in a different color, and her skin was much closer to an emerald shade than Maddy's.

"Winifred, Miss." The elf looked up, both hands folded behind her back. "Winifred apologizes for interrupting, but it's time for Mistress Narcissa's evening tea, and Maddy has alerted us that Miss is at the Manor." The elf's expression turned just a touch skeptical and she straightened her shoulders. "Mistress Narcissa would like to invite Master Draco's _friend_ to join her."

Hermione expected her expression was just as skeptical, both due to the very _thought_ that she'd be a friend of Malfoy's, and due to her surprise that Narcissa was still alive. She'd heard so little over the previous years that she'd assumed Malfoy's mother had died. "I'd be delighted," she said, curiosity overwhelming her previously frantic thoughts. Why a Malfoy would _want_ to speak to her beyond wanting to insult her was a question that demanded an answer, plus she needed to wait for Malfoy to sober up under Maddy's care.

The house-elf bowed and led her, not into the house as she'd expected, but down a path through the garden. White gravel crunched under her boots, the sound muffled by the tall hedges on either side of the path. It ended in a large, bright clearing with a small columned building at the far side. It distinctly resembled a temple, and Hermione stared at it. "If that's to their 'Dark Lord', I'm _out_ of here."

"It's called a folly." Hermione spun around to see a table set beside a bed of white flowers, and a thin blond woman in a chair, a blanket over her lap. Her robes were far too large for her, and she was looking in the opposite direction. "It's seventeenth century, common around that time. Supposedly a copy of Athena Nike's temple, but that had Ionic columns. These are Corinthian. The acanthus are a bit over-carved, I admit, but it _is_ just for decoration."

"Mistress is well-versed in the sculptural arts," Winifred said with pride in her voice as she led Hermione to the table.

"So I see," Hermione said, then winced as Narcissa turned to the sound of her voice and she caught the older witch's unfocused gaze. Her great-grandmother had eyes like that, in her last few years, and Hermione knew what it meant. "They must be fascinating, and so good for someone who can't-- I mean, for someone who's-- um. Tactile?"

"Blind." Instead of the chill Hermione expected, Narcissa's voice held amusement. "It's all right, you can say it. It's not as though it isn't true. And you're correct, they are good for me, though I'm afraid I may end up wearing away Circe on the sea." Apparently, she didn't need vision to catch Hermione's confusion, because she smiled. "In the statuary garden. Circe's my favorite, and since I can't look at her anymore, I touch her." Winifred poured the tea and set a cup in front of Hermione, then did the same for Narcissa and quietly guided the woman's hand to the cup. Narcissa continued speaking, changing subjects blithely. "I'm glad to have one of Draco's old friends visiting. He's been quite lonely these past few years, though he'll never admit it."

Hermione paused, her cup halfway to her mouth, her eyes shifting to Winifred's quickly-hidden expression of embarrassment. "I'm not ... really a 'friend' of-of-of Draco's, Mrs. Malfoy. I'm...." Hermione interrupted herself before she could give her name. She didn't know how much Narcissa might remember about her, but she was almost positive her name would bring up the connection to Harry, at the least, and a reminder of her blood status, if Maddy hadn't already told Narcissa about 'that Mudblood'. She set the cup down and folded her hands together, bracing herself for a negative reaction from a woman whose home had been raided regularly in the past by her department. "I'm with Magical Law Enforcement at the Ministry. Mal-- Draco may have some information on a case I'm investigating, and I need to ask him a few questions."

Narcissa's expression of polite interest didn't falter. "This is a bad time. Draco's had a rough week." Her expression hadn't shifted, but her voice chilled noticeably, and Hermione's fingers tightened around each other.

"I know. And that's part of what I need to ask him." Hermione took a deep breath, took another one, then took a third before finally plunging in. "I'm sure it's a difficult topic and I don't mean to dredge up any bad memories, but I need to ask Mal-- Draco if his Mark has changed any. Recently. Um. I know it's come back. They all have." Narcissa had gone still, and despite her blinded eyes, she seemed to be staring directly at Hermione. "There's something different about them, though, and I wanted to ask--"

"You will leave my son alone." Narcissa's voice went from chilled to cold, and Hermione saw, for the first time since she'd sat down, the Slytherin in the older woman, the protectiveness and determination that Harry had told her had driven Narcissa to lie to Voldemort in the forest at the final battle. "He's had enough trouble, he has had _enough_. We all have. You will not bother him about that Mark, and you will not bring all that up for him again. I forbid it."

"Mrs. Malfoy." Hermione leaned over the table, one hand outstretched, and yanked it back quickly when Winifred started forward, her small fists clenched. "Mrs. Malfoy, I know it's difficult, but we _need_ this. There's something different about the Marks, and maybe whatever it is will lead to a few answers about why Death Eaters are being killed."

"Ask _me_, then." Hermione made a small noise of dissent and Narcissa straightened her posture even further, her chin coming up in the arrogant fashion Hermione remembered from years before. "Young lady, I have been sister, wife, and mother to Death Eaters for longer than you have been alive. I nursed Draco when the Dark Lord saw fit to brand him with that horrible symbol, and I slept beside Lucius and _his_ every night he was home. I know that Mark more intimately than anyone on this earth who doesn't already have one, and if you will not ask me, you will get nothing, because you will _not_ disturb my son!"

Hermione rocked back in her chair, eyes wide, then slowly reached into her robes. Winifred took another step forward, and Hermione stilled. "I'm getting a photograph out of my pocket. I don't know what good it will do." She jerked one of her enlarged photos out and slapped it on the table, surprise and irritation mixing with not a little fear. Narcissa Malfoy could be quite intimidating. No wonder Lucius had married her. "You can't _see_ it, after all."

Hermione grimaced at the rudeness of that, even as Narcissa groped across the table and dragged the photo to her. She held up her free hand, and Winifred pulled a wand from thin air, placing the handle in Narcissa's palm. Narcissa put the tip of her wand to the photograph, murmuring, "_Fero Tactem_", a spell Hermione recognized from advanced transfiguration lessons. The photograph shimmered and, as Hermione watched, began to shift, the surface rising up in bumps and ridges that made it look almost real, almost three-dimensional. Narcissa laid down her wand and ran her fingers over the picture, feeling out the edges and curves of the Mark. Her lips moved, as if she were describing the picture to herself, then she paused, tilting her head. "Here," she said, tapping the photograph at a point near the bottom of the Mark. "The snake. The scale pattern is changed."

Hermione blinked and pulled another copy of the photograph from her pocket, examining it. There didn't seem to be any difference as far as she could tell. She got up and moved around the table, peering over Narcissa's shoulder. The older witch tapped the photograph again, directing her attention. "There. Just on the back of the snake's head. It used to be a band or a ring. Now it's more of a chevron pattern."

It looked like scales to Hermione, and she stared at the picture, trying to see the chevron. "Are you _sure_?" she asked, giving a skeptical look to the back of Narcissa's head.

Narcissa's chin came up again, and she slowly turned her head until her breath was on Hermione's cheek. "If you knew anything about snakes, you'd be sure. I'm surprised you've never read a book on it." She reached up and slid her hand up Hermione's arm, gripping Hermione's wrist tightly as she lowered her voice. "Miss _Granger._"


	4. Chapter 4

**FOUR**

The wide flagstones of the plaza were gleaming, slicked with rain and shimmering with every jagged bolt that crossed the sky. In the middle of the flagstones, crumpled in the center of the plaza, lay a lump of shadow, a pile of sodden robes, rivulets trailing away in dark ribbons. Another lightning flash, and a form stood over the first, robes fluttering in a wind that didn't exist. Its head was bowed, a dark hood pulled up to leave its face in shadows. It raised a hand, spreading long, thin fingers out like the twigs of an ancient tree.

Beneath his skin, Draco's Mark burned. It seared the flesh of his forearm, strung his nerves taut, curled his fingers into a fist. It ached and flared and drove him to grind his teeth against the pain, his jaw clenched to prevent a cry from escaping his mouth. Against his will, he took a step forward, then another, approaching the two forms in the center of the plaza.

Answering the call.

He crossed the plaza in the space of time it took for another bolt to flash across the sky, and he stood with one dark figure at his feet. The second raised its head, beckoning him with those white, twisted fingers. Within the hood was only more blackness, lit dimly, weakly, by a dull red light, and Draco averted his eyes, bowing his head to stare at the crumpled figure. The voice that issued from the depths of the hood sounded high-pitched and hollow, faintly reverberating as if whispered in a cavern. "Welcome back, young Malfoy."

Draco's eyes snapped up from the body on the ground and he stared at the hood, at the faded light that showed scarlet even in the blinding flash of lightning. He knew the voice, trembled at it. "You're dead."

A thin laugh echoed around the plaza, rolling with a burst of thunder. "Tom Riddle is dead. _I_ am not."

Draco shivered and tried to take a step back, but his legs refused to answer him, his body as still as the one crumpled between him and the dark figure. "Potter killed you. Only time in his life he's ever been useful. You're dead, and this is a dream. Not the first time I've had it, either, so bring on the rain of blood and the snakes. Let's get this over with." The bravado in his words was destroyed by the shaking, quavering of his voice, and he swallowed hard, his hands curling and clenching in the sides of his robes.

The dark figure laughed again. "If you insist." It raised a foot and shoved at the body, rolling it over. Robes twisted, dark hair spread across the flagstone. Lightning flashed, and Draco saw, under a smear of blood, a woman's pale face, eyes staring blankly into the sky, her mouth open in an eternal scream. Draco's gut twisted and the stasis in his limbs broke. He dropped, bruising his knees on the flagstones.

"You killed her."

The brightest flash of lightning yet crackled across the sky, and Draco saw the woman clearly. Brown eyes, dulled in death, a spray of freckles over the bridge of her nose. Brown curls soaking in a pool of blood. "Her--"

"This is your fault. Her death is in your hands."

Draco fought for breath, one hand pressed to his chest over the long scar Potter had given him years before, the scar that ached and made him gasp for air. "Her--"

"Her death is in _your_ hands." Bony fingers gripped his chin, lifted his face up, dug into his cheeks and forced him to look into the depths of the hood that bent over him. His Mark burned. The fingers tightened on his cheeks. The high voice whispered beside his ear, soft like a lover. "Welcome back."

Draco screamed.

His cheeks stung from a slap, and Draco's eyes snapped open. The face over him was wrinkled and small, eyes wide and bulging with worry. "Maddy," he murmured, his voice breaking. "Maddy. I ... I can't breathe."

Maddy yelped and leapt up, her weight flying off his chest. "So sorry, so sorry, Master Draco! Master wouldn't wake up and he was screaming and Maddy couldn't get him to stop, so she hit him." Maddy keened and tumbled off the bed, running to the armoire to slam her fingers in the door. "Bad Maddy!"

"Stop that." Maddy froze, her hand on the frame and the armoire door held wide. Draco sat up, elbows on his knees and hands tucked into his hair. "You did the right thing," he muttered to his sheets, eyes closed to block out the sight of his Mark. "Just a nightmare. It's all right. Get me a drink, Maddy." Silence followed his order, a long silence, and Draco looked up to see Maddy cowering beside the foot of his bed, one ear twisted in her hands. "Maddy," he said, staring at her, his eyes narrowing. "Brandy."

She twisted her ear harder, until he thought she might twist it right off her skull. "Master is out of brandy."

Draco sighed and shoved his hair back off his face, feeling chilled sweat from his forehead coat his palm and soak into the strands of his fringe. He fastened the cuff of his robes, hiding his Mark from view again and feeling a small knot of tension uncoil from between his shoulders once it was gone from his sight. "Wine, then."

"Master...." She ducked her head, avoiding his eyes. "Master ordered Maddy to pour all the wine into the fishpond after he found a bottle that was vinegary. The wine is gone. And-and-and. And the fish are all dead."

Groaning, Draco thumped back into the pillows. "I _need_ a drink, Maddy." A dull red glow spread across the darkness behind his eyelids, and Draco shivered, expecting to hear a voice beside his ear.

Maddy peered over the edge of the footboard, her fingers clamped on the dark wood. "Master could join Mistress Narcissa in the garden for tea?" Her wide eyes were hopeful, her ears twitching at the tips. "Master would enjoy tea, maybe. And he could insult that Mudblood! That always makes him happy."

"Granger's here?" Draco pushed up onto his elbows, staring down the length of his body and bed at Maddy's expression as it slowly altered to chagrin. She tipped her head forward, her ears fell around her face like the sides of a long hood, and in the light of the oil lamps hanging over his bed, Maddy's eyes gleamed scarlet. Draco's heart pounded. "Granger's _here_?" His voice cracked and broke, and Maddy backed away, nodding as if her head were on a spring. Draco growled, threw off his sheets, and bolted from the room.

***

His head pounding, his heart pounding, Draco tore through the gardens behind the Manor, his boots skidding and sliding over the gravel paths. Maddy hadn't told him where Narcissa was taking her tea, but he hadn't needed to ask. By the jonquils, by her beloved flowers. She never changed, no matter what else did. He ran to the end of the path, grabbing at one of the hedges to halt his speed, slicing his palm on the sharp twigs. There, the table; there, Winifred. There, Granger.

Draco's vision flared and went red. Of everything he had done in his life, every crime he had committed in the Dark Lord's name, every day he had trembled and wept as he tried to fulfill a mission he knew was suicidal, all of it had been done to protect his family, to save his parents. He would do whatever it took to protect them, and the sight of Granger, leaning over his mother's shoulder, a struggle in progress, aroused that protective need.

He almost dove across the clearing at the sight of them, at Narcissa leaning away from Granger and Granger's upraised hand. Aiming for the first and easiest target, that cloud of dark, bushy hair, he snagged a handful of it. Every rule about not committing violence on a woman disappeared behind his anger. He grabbed her, yanked her away from the table and his mother, and flung her backwards without time for her to do more than give a shriek of surprise and pain. As soon as she was out of his line of sight, he forgot about her, and he bent over Narcissa, not even noticing the shocked set of her mouth. "Mum, you all right?" he murmured, running his hands over her cheeks and shoulders. "She didn't hurt you, did she? She'll pay for it if she did, I promise."

Narcissa blinked, her unfocused gaze still managing to give more than a hint of exasperation to her expression. "I'm _fine_," she snapped, and the sharp tone sent Draco a step backward, trepidation and confusion mixing with and overtaking his anger. "I was _talking_ to her about something that didn't involve you, and you had no right, Draco, _none_." Her hand slapped onto the table and came up with her wand. It wasn't pointed anywhere near him, but he still flinched and jumped back, both hands raised in an ineffectual attempt at defense. "I can take care of myself!"

Draco chewed on his lip and slowly eased forward, pushing Narcissa's wand aside with one finger. "Mum, I ... I'm sorry. I saw her, and it looked like a fight from over there, and I just...." He shrugged helplessly and pushed his hair out of his eyes with one hand, exhaling sharply. "I panicked. I thought she was going to hurt you. Don't you know who she is?"

"I'm blind, Draco, not stupid. Of course I knew who she was, Winifred informed me. I was curious as to her purpose here, and I'm afraid I startled her quite a bit when I identified her out loud." Narcissa's expression softened just a touch, but she folded her arms with a huff, her wand poking up beside her cheek. "She didn't hurt me. I rather think you hurt _her_."

Draco looked over her shoulder, abruptly realizing what he'd done. Granger was sitting on the ground, with Winifred fluttering around her like a wrinkled, green hummingbird. Granger had her hand pressed to her forehead, and as he watched, she lowered it tentatively. The shift in pressure sent blood pouring out of a gash over her brow. She snapped her hand back up, but blood had already coated her cheek and dripped to her jaw. Draco gasped, the image from his dream almost appearing in front of him, and he staggered, catching his balance on the tea table.

Narcissa reached out to him, her look of pique switching instantly to a mother's concern. "Draco, what's wrong?"

He babbled at her, not sure what he was saying beyond "all right, it's all right," and he lunged across the grass, dropping to one knee at Granger's side. He swore under his breath, stammered an apology, and hit his arse when Granger whipped around and shoved him.

"You-you-you _prat_!" she shouted, flailing at his shoulder with the hand not pressed to her forehead. "Are you mad? Are you _insane_? What the hell was going through what little mind you have?"

Draco tried to scramble into a more defensive position. "_Sorry_!" he cried, finally managing to get to his knees, his robes twisted around his legs. "Granger, I'm sorry. I just-- I thought-- I didn't--" He stammered to a halt under the vicious look she gave him, one hand still pressed to her forehead. Winifred gave him nearly as vile a glare before looking horrified at herself. "Winifred, go check on Mum. Granger, please. I'm sorry. I didn't mean...." He reached out, hesitantly touching her shoulder. "Please, let me help."

He wasn't certain if it was the offer itself or the blood loss that put that stunned look into her eyes, but either way, it meant he could press his advantage. He got to his feet, one hand extended, and when she grasped it, still eyeing him strangely, he pulled her to her feet. She staggered a bit, and he caught her around the waist, holding her up. "Careful, Granger. That's a nasty bump. What happened?"

She glared up at him, her lips pressed together in a thin line, brows beetled. "Some pointy-faced arse _attacked_ me."

Draco had the grace to flush, and he bowed his head, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. "I'm sorry," he said, deliberately keeping his voice soft in efforts to make it obvious he was feeling a little penitent. "I didn't think. My mother is the most important person in the world to me, and I just want to keep her safe. I saw what looked like a struggle, and I just ... snapped. It wasn't directed at you personally."

Granger tilted her head, her brows lifting as she looked at his face. "Draco Malfoy. That sounded both emotional and sincere." Abruptly, she smiled, her face lighting up despite the blood drying on her cheek. "I must have hit my head _really_ hard."

He snorted with a repressed laugh, rolling his eyes. "Do you want help or not?"

She thumped him in the shoulder. "Let go of me, and I'll see about that. Might as well. Malfoy offering assistance is probably rarer than those Nargles Luna used to go on about."

He hadn't realized he was still holding on to her, and he let her go, his cheeks heating with another flush. Why he'd kept his arms around her, he couldn't quite explain. _Keep her from falling_, he told himself. _Just in case she was dizzy from that knock on the head_. Absolutely nothing to do with her being surprisingly warm and soft and _Hermione Granger, Malfoy. Good god, man, it's been years but not_ that _long_. He stepped away from her, shaking his head. "Bandages. Inside."

She gave him an odd look, then tentatively pulled her fingers away from her brow to prod at the cut. "I think it's stopped bleeding. I need to clean up, though." She glanced over her shoulder at Narcissa and Winifred, both sitting quietly at the table, Winifred's short legs swinging as she watched Narcissa with discomfort at _sharing_ her mistress' table clear in her huge eyes. "And I need to ask you a few questions. Alone."

***

Maddy delivered various supplies to the study to help Granger clean up and bandage her cut, which looked a lot less frightening once the blood was washed away. "Head injuries bleed profusely, but are rarely as severe as they look," she informed him in what was clearly her lecturing voice - he felt a small surge of pity for Potter and the Weasel, if they'd suffered _that_ all these years - while peering into a hand mirror. "Don't think it'll need stitches."

Draco, who had offered her the use of a downstairs bathroom for the clean-up while he took care of his sliced palm in the study, gave her a long look over the tips of his steepled fingers. "Stitches? Is that some bizarre Muggle thing? Sewing yourself back together? No thanks, I'd just as soon use a sealing charm, or--" He waggled the bottle of Coagulation Cream he'd used on his hand. "Or a potion." Granger stared at him, her eyes slowly widening, her cheeks and the tip of her nose gradually pinkening. Draco chuckled and tipped back in his chair, swinging his feet up onto the desk. "Didn't even think of that? Thought you were a witch, Granger."

She put the mirror down and watched him for a moment, then folded her hands together and took a deep breath. "Thought you and your kind believed I didn't deserve to be a witch, Malfoy." She seemed to be staring directly at his left arm, and Draco tensed, looking away from her. "Thought you and your kind were just ducky with trying to get us all killed." A hollow, bitter laugh floated to him, and Draco cringed. "Thought you were going to try to kill me today, actually."

"I never wanted to kill anyone." Draco said it before he could think, then stared at the tips of his boots to avoid looking at her. _Your kind_. The words of that note floated through his mind, and he knew he'd got only a glimmering of how it must have felt to be on the receiving end of that sort of hate. He drew his cigarette case from his pocket and used the small ritual of lighting one to distract him from having _your kind_ echo in his thoughts. Tossing the lighter onto his desk, he exhaled a long stream of smoke and glanced at Granger from the corner of his eye. She was watching him with what seemed to be an expectant look on her face, and he shrugged.

"What else can I say that wasn't in my trial records, Granger? I joined the Death Eaters because I was ordered to. I took on the task of murdering Dumbledore to keep my parents safe. I followed the commands of a madman because I didn't know any better." He sighed and tapped ashes into a cut-glass dish. "Because I didn't want to know any better. Didn't want to listen to anyone who might dare to tell me that I or my father was _wrong_." A small, rueful smile touched his mouth, and he shook his head. "Never did like it when anyone criticized me. You might have noticed that."

She kept watching him, her expression a mix of understanding and pity, but she stayed quiet. From what he remembered of her in school, the silence was damn near miraculous. It was also uncomfortable, and Draco kept talking, just to fill up the space and to stop the echo in his head. "I never wanted to kill anyone. Hell, I'm not even certain that anything I've ever said about Mudbl-- Muggle-borns was anything I ever actually believed. Pure-blood superiority is a little more difficult to embrace when it doesn't really seem to be accurate." Granger made a small noise and Draco acknowledged her with a wave of his cigarette. "I do occasionally read the paper, Granger. A good portion of the most recent advancements in potions and other areas of magical studies have been accomplished by half-bloods and Muggle-borns. In general, the most successful witches and wizards are those who aren't worth the name, by the definition I used most of my life. And what have the pure-bloods accomplished? We're dying out and fading into obscurity." He held his hands wide and looked down at himself. "Scion of the Malfoy _and_ Black lines, and what have I done with it? What do I have to show for it?" He set his cigarette in the ashtray, unfastened the neckline of his robes, and rolled up his sleeves. "This shiny collar and that bloody tattoo."

At the edge of his vision, Granger stood up and moved towards him. Except for a tensing in his shoulders, he didn't move, barely breathed. He'd had a lot of time to do a lot of thinking during his voluntary isolation, and most of those thoughts would have appalled his younger self. After the war, though, and after seeing the results of it, he'd come to the conclusion that he'd been an absolute idiot. Other than Narcissa Malfoy, they all had been. At least he'd been lucky enough to live through it. _But_, he thought as Granger approached his desk, _if she's going to hug me for admitting all that, I'll have to hurt her on purpose this time_.

She did touch him, but only on the wrist. On the _left_ wrist. He started to jerk his arm away, but she grabbed his hand. "That bloody tattoo is what I wanted to ask you about." She twisted his hand to turn his forearm face-up, the Mark in clear view. "It's come back. They've _all_ come back."

Draco gave her a questioning look, and she ran through the recent events. A sick feeling of horror settled in his gut as he listened, but it was tempered with a sense of relief. Possibly an even sicker sense, considering that it _was_ relief, but at least this information from Granger meant that he wasn't alone. That he wasn't the only person who'd been called back into service. Judging from the details about the riot, he appeared to have been the only one who refused to answer, though. Maybe he _had_ learned a few things during his house arrest.

Granger pointed at his Mark, at the snake's head just over the tendons in his wrist. "They've come back, and there was something different about them. I couldn't figure it out. Your mother said it was the pattern of the scales, and that it looks like a chevron now. Well, feels like."

Draco peered at his wrist, interested despite himself. He pulled his arm closer, examining the Mark. He'd tried to pretend it didn't exist for years, but since the re-emergence, he'd put some serious effort into denial. He hadn't noticed the change, and now he took a long look at it. "Looks sort of like a letter," he said, holding his arm up close to his eyes. "Like a V, maybe? Or ... wait." He leaned in. "There's two points."

Either his eyes were dimming or the gas lamps were, because the Mark was getting harder to see. Draco glanced up and met Granger's confused look. "It just got _really_ dark outside," she said, her voice quavering at the end. Draco stared at the window, where light should have been shining through even with the ivy covering the glass. Nothing. Absolute darkness. Then he heard his mother's voice lifted in a shout of ringing triumph.

"_Lucius!_"

And everything went green.

***

Draco sped through the house, Granger falling behind as she stumbled over furniture and into walls. Draco knew where every chair and table in the Manor was, knew nothing had been moved since Narcissa had gone blind, and charged through the rooms of the Manor on memory alone. His mother's scream echoed in his ears, and in the green-tinged darkness that had enveloped the house, he could see the images from his nightmare almost as though they were real. The rain-soaked plaza, the hooded figure, the woman crumpled at his feet.... Draco gulped and picked up speed.

He careened off a doorframe and skidded out onto the stones of a terrace at the rear of the house. Overhead, _it_ shone, and Draco hit his knees with a scream of denial. The green skull and snake in the sky, hovering in front of the clouds. The Dark Mark. _His_ Mark. As green and glowing against the blackness of the sky as it was black on the pale skin of his arm. It wasn't the first time he'd seen it, wasn't the first time he'd heard screams at its appearance, but it was the first time those screams had been so loud, so close.

So his.

Granger stumbled out of the house and into him, tripping over his robes and landing hard beside him. She looked up, gasped, and started a low, repetitive litany. "Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no." She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked on her knees, her hair falling into her face. "Malfoy, _no_."

In the middle of a wide expanse of grass, shown clearly by the green and grinning skull, two figures lay on the ground. One small, a long swathe of fabric trailing across the grass, outlining Winifred's path as she'd crawled. Crawled towards her mistress.

Draco sucked in air, let it out on another scream, and scrambled to his feet. He ran across the terrace and the grass to throw himself down beside the second crumpled figure. Elaborately detailed, over-large robes. A spray of long blond hair. A gold wedding band. Draco rolled her over, the effort and his terror making his chest ache under his scar as his breath came in gasps. "Mum, Mum, _please_." Her face, pointed at the sky, was relaxed, calm, smiling, and absolutely still.

Draco knelt beside his mother's body, weeping and unashamed of it. _Her death is in your hands._ Narcissa was dead. His mother was dead. It was his fault. He'd refused to answer the call, refused to return to service, and this was the result, this was what happened. It was his fault. Draco keened and bent over Narcissa, not seeing Granger join him, not feeling her arm slip over his shoulders. He heard her, though, heard her soft whisper of "I'm so sorry," and he collapsed against her. She held him close, cradled him against her shoulder, and rubbed the back of his neck, murmuring "I'm sorry" over and over again.

Draco shook his head, not caring who was touching him, not caring who was speaking so quietly against his ear, only caring that the woman he'd have given his life for - and nearly _did_ \- was dead. He shook Granger off and bent over, gathering Narcissa into his arms. Her limbs hung slack, her head lolled, and he hiccoughed for air, tugging her close and holding her head up, his fingers tangled in the long, blond strands. "Mum, I'm so sorry," he whispered, bending to kiss her cold, still forehead. "I'm so sorry." He ground his teeth together, grimacing at the chill in her skin, and his arms tightened around her. Behind him, Granger shifted closer, and she slid a shaking hand over his mother's cheek to close sightless eyes.

"Let's get her inside, Mal-- Draco," she said to him, her voice the softest he imagined she was capable of making it. "She wouldn't want to be lying in the grass when MLE comes."

He clutched Narcissa tighter, nodding furiously, even if he wasn't quite certain why. Narcissa _wouldn't_ want to be found in the garden. As for MLE, he hadn't even thought of them, but he supposed they would have to come. They investigated every other Death Eater killing, and if they dared to make this one the slightest bit different, there would be hell to pay. They'd come, they'd investigate, they'd discover his mother's killer.

And then they'd finally get to arrest _him_ for committing murder instead of just attempting it.

Draco got to his feet, carefully, Granger's assistance all that kept him from tripping or dropping back to his knees with his grief. His mother's body was light in his arms, and he was shocked to realize how little she weighed. She'd been wearing Lucius' robes for so long, waiting for her husband to come home, that he'd never noticed how thin she'd grown. "Sorry, Mum," he murmured again, his voice cracking. "I should have paid more attention." Every day that he'd ignored her in favor of sulking about the Manor, every day he'd tried to forget what had happened to them by trying to forget about her, fell on him like a cascade of rocks, and his shoulders bowed against it. His fault. All his fault.

A hand touched his cheek and he slowly brought his head up to see Granger watching him, her face streaked with tears. "Take her inside, Draco."

He nodded again, for once grateful that he had orders to follow. Someone else giving instructions meant he didn't have to think, and right then, thinking was the last thing he felt able to do. He turned and headed for the house, then stopped and looked over his shoulder. "Don't forget Winifred," he told Granger, each word tight and shaking. "She's Mum's favorite."

Granger was already kneeling beside the house-elf and pulling the long sheet back into place as Winifred's toga. "I won't forget her." She glanced up at Draco, and she gave him the smallest, tiniest twitch of a smile. "And I'm glad you didn't. I'll bring her."


	5. Chapter 5

**FIVE**

At the funeral, Malfoy stood alone, straight-shouldered and red-eyed, his hands locked behind his back. He'd seemed surprised that Hermione had come, but other than a sharp look to her when she'd stepped into the gardens in her best black robes, he hadn't said a word, just nodded and turned his attention back to the officiant. Hermione had been somewhat surprised to see that the elderly man performing the rites appeared to be a wizard as well as a priest with white tabbed collar and vestments, never having suspected the Malfoys to have any religion at all, much less Catholicism. A cynical voice in the back of her head muttered _where else can you find a belief system that lets you kill anyone you want as long as you're really sorry and you recite the Hail Mary five times_, but she shoved it down quickly, ashamed of herself for thinking like that at Narcissa's funeral.

Hermione was the only attendant besides Malfoy, and she stayed out of his line of sight, just in case, but kept an eye on him. He didn't waver, didn't move, until the officiant raised a wand and clods of dirt thudded into the deep grave that had been dug by the jonquils in the garden where she'd had tea with Narcissa. The first soft thump bowed his head, the second shook his shoulders, and by the third, he was moving, turning away and heading towards the Manor with long, rushed strides. Hermione followed Malfoy, caught up to him just outside the door, and snatched at his sleeve. She barely touched him, but he jumped, jerking away from her. His eyes, wide and watery, failed to track for a moment, then focused on her face.

"Thank you for coming," he said, his voice flat and monotonous. She'd expected a slur in his words, expected that he'd have managed to get plenty of alcohol into his system, considering the way she'd seen him last and the circumstances under which she was seeing him now, but he spoke without even the bored drawl she remembered from school, his words crisp. "You can see yourself out." Hermione could see the strain in his face, each muscle tense as he fought to keep his expression blank. It was clear he was doing his best to keep in control while she was there, but the effort of speaking to her, of speaking at all, cost him. He swallowed hard and audibly, his eyes watered until they overflowed, and Hermione reached for him without thinking. She wasn't sure what she meant to do - give him a hug or wipe his tears off his cheeks - but he spun around and disappeared into the house.

She watched him go, her throat feeling as if she'd swallowed a Snitch - full and thick and choking. Malfoy might have been lonely before, but now he was _alone_. He had no one. Had nothing but a large, empty house. Had _nothing_. Nobody deserved that, not even Malfoy, and remembering that she'd thought otherwise only a couple of weeks before made her throat tighten even further. She dragged her hand across her cheeks, pretending to herself that a bug had flown at her face and that her fingers hadn't come away wet. A tug at the hem of her skirt pulled her attention away from Malfoy and the way his grey eyes had been like a storm-tossed sea, and she looked down to knee-level, grateful for the distraction.

Maddy stood there, long ears drooping, her tablecloth-sari dyed a deep saffron. She twisted her fingers together, glanced up and away quickly at making eye contact with Hermione, then cleared her throat. "Miss. Maddy wishes to-to-to thank you for bringing Winifred in after the ... the incident." Hermione, surprised by the lack of animosity in Maddy's voice, could do nothing but blink as Maddy continued. "Master Draco told Maddy that Miss sticks her nose in where it doesn't belong too often, but Maddy thinks that Miss cannot be all bad." Maddy's hands trembled, and Hermione imagined she was fighting the temptation to slam them in a door for the bad behavior of speaking kindly towards a Mudblood.

"You're welcome, Maddy," Hermione said, finally finding her voice. "Has Winifred been ... arranged for? Taken care of?" She didn't know anything about how house-elves handled their dead, but she suspected that Harry's funeral for Dobby years before had been atypical at best.

Maddy nodded and pointed across the gardens. "There, Miss. Master Draco took care of everything." Hermione looked, and over the gardens, at the edge of a forest that backed onto the estate, she saw a small structure, a platform built well off the ground. It appeared to have been burned, and Hermione stared at it for a moment before realizing what it was. It had been a funeral pyre for an open-air cremation, and she looked down to Maddy, her jaw dropped.

"Maddy couldn't make the fire strong enough, so Master Draco took over. He was very, very sick afterwards, but he told Maddy that Winifred was worth the pain, for Mistress Narcissa's sake." The house-elf stroked her throat, outlining the shape of an imaginary collar, and Hermione took that to mean that Malfoy had used magic for the pyre and the flames, and that his inhibitor collar had punished him for it. She wasn't sure which shocked her more - that Malfoy, knowing the limits the inhibitor spell permitted, would have expended magic on a house-elf's funeral, or that he'd allowed Winifred a funeral at all.

When she looked down, Maddy was gone. Hermione turned to stare at the Manor, and gave some thought to seeking out Malfoy to ask him a few questions, but a small spark of guilt stopped her. _Sticks her nose in where it doesn't belong_. Harry'd said it, and Malfoy'd said it. Two people, so diametrically opposed in everything, had agreed on something. Something, she decided, about which she needed to prove them _both_ wrong. Starting right then.

***

She returned to her flat in a contemplative state and went straight to the bedroom to change. When she emerged, tugging a thick jumper over her head, a man's voice spoke from the living room and made her jump with a shriek. "So where were you?" the voice asked as she struggled to get the jumper down without catching on her ears or in her hair. "And don't say 'at the office', because I checked."

She jerked the material into place finally, scraping her nose with her nails. Ron, sprawled in _her_ chair, stared directly at her while tossing a wadded parchment from hand to hand. "So where were you?" he asked again. "You weren't the office, weren't at your mum's. Weren't at _my_ mum's. Weren't even at the library."

She eyed him, wondering why his voice seemed so unaccustomedly sharp. "I had something to do."

"Oh, I knew that much." Ron unwadded the parchment and held it up to read from it. "Ron, I have something to do, see you later, H." Balling it up again, he tossed it over his shoulder. "Not the best explanation you've ever given, really. Might have left a few details out here and there."

Hermione didn't like the tone of his voice and didn't like the way he stared at her, with his eyes narrowed and his forehead wrinkled. It didn't seem like him, didn't quite seem normal. The last time she'd seen him like this had been years before, while they were on the Horcrux hunt, right before he'd stormed off and abandoned her and Harry. The memory of that made her hands tremble, her chest aching as if her lungs had stopped working. She took a deep, forced breath and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on, counting to ten before she called into the other room. "Nothing important. Just needed to take care of something personal. I didn't think it was any big deal." Taking care of the kettle settled her confusion a bit, and she turned, jumping to see Ron had followed her and was leaning against the doorframe, his freckles almost invisible in the red flush on his face.

"No, just a funeral for a ferret's mum." Hermione's eyes widened and her mouth opened, but Ron held up a hand. "Giffin told me. What he couldn't tell me, and what I just can't seem to figure out, is why you went. Why this is the third time you've been to Malfoy's this month. Now, if I were the suspicious sort, I'd wonder about this sudden interest in the pointy bastard. I'd wonder if it had anything to do with how busy you've been, how little time you've spent at home, how little I've seen you the past few weeks." He shrugged and pushed off the doorframe with one shoulder, moving past her to open a cabinet and fetch out her favorite mug. "If I were more suspicious, I'd wonder why you'd want to spend more time with Malfoy than with your own boyfriend."

He held the mug out to her, but she didn't move to take it. Didn't move at all, just stared at him with her mouth open. Ron waggled the mug, then thumped it on the counter with a snort. The sound of it was reminiscent of the sound of the clods of dirt as they'd fallen onto Narcissa's coffin, and Hermione shuddered out of her stasis. "I went to a _funeral_, Ron! Pardon me for thinking that it might be _polite_, since I was only there when she _died_! Excuse me for caring enough to go to support a man whose mother had been murdered! I was the only other person there, you know that? Nobody cared, but me! And what are you sounding so jealous about Malfoy for? He's-he's-he's-" Her arms flailed and she tossed her hair over her shoulder to see Ron more clearly. "He's _Malfoy_. He's part of an investigation, he's under Ministry custody, and he's lone--"

"He poisoned me!" Ron interrupted her, shouting, slapping one hand on the counter. "He poisoned me, cursed Rosmerta, and attempted to kill Dumbledore. He's a sodding Death Eater! Or maybe you forgot all of that because of whatever he's done to you that makes you say his name in your sleep!"

Hermione gaped at him. "_What_? What are you going on about?"

"Last night," he snapped, stepping closer to her. "Last night, first night we've actually slept in the same bed at the same time for a couple of weeks now. You were mumbling in your sleep, and I thought maybe you were having one of your nightmares again, maybe all the stress was getting to you." He took another step. "Then you said his name. Clear as day, too, and it wasn't _Malfoy_." One more step forward, and he had her pinned against the counter, his eyes bright and cold. "It was _Draco_."

***

They argued for hours. Hermione was appalled at Ron's jealousy and his inability to understand why she was working so hard on the murders - _They're just Death Eaters, kill them all and be done with it, bastard should get a medal!_ \- and Ron sniped about how much time she spent away from home and him and how much she spent with Malfoy - _Right, I'm sleeping with him, he's got a kink for Muggle-borns and he was just waiting for someone to kill _both_ his parents so they couldn't cut him out of the will!_ \- and neither of them listened to the other, both going over the same ground repeatedly.

By the time Ron stormed out of the flat - _That's right, Ronald Weasley, run! It's what you do every time it gets rough!_ \- her favorite mug was broken, the kettle had boiled over, and Hermione was hoarse from shouting, her throat raw from the tears she'd sniffed down during the argument.

She refilled the kettle and got out her second favorite mug, making a cup of chamomile tea to soothe her throat. With it and a box of tissues, she curled up in her chair, a blanket pulled around her shoulders and tucked under her feet. Ron was being absolutely unreasonable, and for no reason at all. What he'd said about Malfoy - how could he get that idea? She tried to remember what she could have been dreaming about that would have made her say Malfoy's name in her sleep, but nothing came to mind except flashes and hints. The pale grey of Malfoy's eyes, the scent of his shampoo or his cologne, the feel of his robes under her fingertips. All of it, easily explained by her automatic comforting response to finding Narcissa's body, or Malfoy helping her up from the grass after his attack, or her assistance to Maddy when he'd passed out.

Thinking about those all made her grimace and pull the blanket closer to her chin. Perhaps, technically, she _had_ seen Malfoy more - and touched him more - than she had Ron in a while. It was all in the line of duty, she'd told Ron, and she told herself that again, crumpling a tissue and swiping at her nose. Even the funeral. Narcissa had been of great assistance at the end of the war, even Harry would say that, and she deserved to have more than just her son attending her funeral.

As for all the work at the Ministry, the concentration on the case? Ron's reaction to that disturbed Hermione more than his jealousy. At least _that_ she had some experience with, even if he'd been under the locket's influence at the time. But this was different. This was worse.

She remembered how he'd rolled his eyes at her in school for her house-elf rights campaigns, how he'd tried to convince her that a good portion - most, she admitted to herself, rubbing her forehead - of her activities with the Department of Magical Creatures were over-reaching and unnecessary, and now this.

_They don't have anyone to speak up for them, Ron! They're being killed!_

They don't need_ it! This is just like your stupid spew thing at Hogwarts, just like your anti-fishing regulation for waters with merfolk _migration_, just like your Erumpent _breeding_ program! They don't need your interference, don't need your so-called help! They're animals, vermin, and if somebody kills them off, so much the better for us!_

Hermione hunkered down in her chair and clutched her tea in both hands, the blanket wrapped over her palms to shield them from the heat. Vermin. Animals. The more she thought about it, the more she recalled about Ron's attitude towards anything not human, and the more she focused on that as the crux of their argument in attempts to push any thought of Malfoy behind her. How Ron had always been so casual about the house-elves at Hogwarts, so blasé about using them to cook, clean, and fetch.

Then, despite herself, she thought about Malfoy and the house-elves at Malfoy Manor. About Winifred, taking such care to see that Narcissa didn't spill her tea or get biscuit crumbs in her lap. About Maddy's terror when she thought Malfoy was hurt and her abject relief when he wasn't. Ron, she sniffed, would probably say they were afraid of getting punished, and previously, she'd have agreed with him or even said it first. Now, she wasn't quite so sure. Would Maddy have stroked Malfoy's hair so gently, if she'd been afraid he would discipline her severely for not stopping his fall? Would Winifred have glared at her so viciously for raising her voice to Narcissa, if Narcissa was nothing but an owner? The Malfoy house-elves seemed to care for their masters and to _be_ cared for in return, even to the extent of Malfoy himself knowing and aiding in their funeral rites. She hadn't known they _had_ funerals, in spite of her research and all her efforts to do more for their kind. The Malfoys seemed to treat their house-elves relatively well.

There had been Dobby, of course, and despite his self-inflicted punishments when he spoke ill of his former masters, he _had_ spoken ill of them. _But then_, that small voice in the back of her mind said, _everyone told you Dobby was an aberration, that he was mental. And if you're going to treat them as equivalent to humans, you have to assume that, just like humans, some of them can go insane. Maybe he did._ It was possible, probable even, that Dobby was out of the ordinary and had twisted the Malfoys' care in his mind. Narcissa had thanked Winifred at the tea table. Malfoy had thanked Maddy for bringing the medical supplies. The words had seemed automatic and unforced, and neither Winifred nor Maddy had seemed surprised to hear them. Not like the house-elves at Hogwarts, who had seemed shocked every time _she_ thanked them. Or when Ron and Harry had thanked them with her prodding.

Hermione snorted and drained the remainder of her tea. With her _interference_, apparently. "Well. If that's the way he wants to think it, then fine by me," she muttered as she pulled out her wand and pointed it at the door, sealing the locks shut. She'd interfere, all right. Interfere with him getting back home until dawn.

***

She clutched at the sheets, fingers tensed and aching around fistfuls of faded and use-thinned cotton, hints of lavender wash soap reaching into her nostrils when she squeezed down hard on the material. Gripping the sheets, holding on against each thrust, she bowed her head until her hair fell around her face in clumps that stuck to her cheeks and clung to heated, sweaty skin. Her mouth hung loose, with small, panted grunts escaping each time her lover's cock shoved into her, and beneath her chin, a tiny spot of moisture grew, a small patch of damp forming on the sheet as she forgot to swallow, nearly forgot to breathe, and a few drips of saliva fell from her tongue. His hands were tight on her hips, his fingers digging into the flesh until she could feel the edges of his nails pinching and biting at her skin. He shifted his grip and a new spot of pain flared in her hips, and she knew he was leaving bruises behind.

She didn't care. She was wet for him, more wet than she could remember being before, her body slick and desperate for every movement. His thrusts were steady and relentless, picking up speed. Her body stretched to accommodate him, inner walls lengthening to give him more room, to let him push deeper into her cunt. Intellectually, she knew the mechanics behind it, the reason for it, her body adjusting to be receptive for a successful mating, a process of evolution designed to ensure the perpetuation of the species, and she started to fret, wondering if she'd remembered any sort of contraception, then her lover shoved into her again and the head of his cock stroked across her G-spot. Her intellect dissolved and she tossed her head back with a scream of surprised pleasure.

The bruising force on one side of her hips lifted and his hand wrapped in her hair. He shoved, pushed her head into the pillows with a firm grasp on the base of her skull. "Don't," he grumbled, his voice muffled by her hair and the pillow. "Don't look at me. Don't move."

She made a small sound, half laugh and half groan, wondering how he expected her not to _move_ when he was making her entire body quiver, but she nodded into the pillow. When he released her, she turned her head just enough to breathe, tiny moans joining each exhale. Her back ached, her breasts swayed until her nipples were screaming with friction against the sheets, her thighs shook from being held so wide apart, and despite it all, she realized she was close to coming.

She groaned into the pillow, arching her back to push towards him, and he thrust harder, responding to her actions with his own deep groan. He gripped her again and yanked her back, the bones in his hips sharp against the curves of her arse. Each thrust shook the bed, rattled the rails of the frame, slammed the headboard into the wall with a thud. Thud.

_Thud_.

"Hermione Granger, open this door right now! This diaper has reached its limit!"

Her eyes snapped open. She bolted upright in her chair, the blanket falling from around her shoulders into her lap, and stared blindly into space, heart pounding, mind swirling and confused. She'd been dreaming, had fallen asleep in her chair, and she tried to remember who or what had been in her dream to make her body feel so anxious and trembling. It had faded already, lost to the vagaries of sudden awakening, and all she could recall was....

Nothing. A voice, maybe, but nothing concrete. Hermione closed her eyes and tried to concentrate, pulling at the frayed threads of her dream to knit them back together, but another thud to the door scattered her focus. "Come _on_, Hermione! I've got a wet Weasley here!"

Hermione pulled the blanket over her shoulders like a cloak and made her way to the door, shuffling along on legs that felt oddly weak and rubbery. She had to go back for her wand to undo the locking spell she'd thrown at the door the previous night, and as soon as she opened it, Ginny thrust a knitted bag into her hands. "About time, this kid's heavy."

Ginny swept past her and straight into the kitchen, where she plopped young James onto the table, pushed a pile of parchments and case files to the side, and started unfastening the snaps on his clothing. Hermione shut the door and followed with some amusement. "Shouldn't that be a wet _Potter_?" she asked, nudging Ginny aside with her hip. "Here, let me."

Ginny dropped into a chair as Hermione made faces at young James while stripping him down. "I haven't slept in days. He spit up on my favorite jumper, pulled Crookshanks' tail, and chewed on my left nipple. Today, he's a Weasley." Her head fell over the back of the chair and she yawned deeply. "Plus, wet Weasley sounds better." Hermione laughed and pulled off the wet cloth diaper, setting it aside for a Scouring charm later. She turned back just in time to see a thin stream of liquid headed straight for her face.

"_Protego_!" Ginny threw a shield up and eyed her grinning son with fond exasperation. "He does that, sorry. He thinks it's funny. Next time, put a diaper down _before_ you turn around. Unless you enjoy getting pissed on. Some people do, you know."

Hermione banished the shield, cleaned the table, and finished changing James. "I know. Some people also enjoy sushi. I try to make allowances for bizarre behavior." Once she'd dressed James, she picked him up and took a chair across from Ginny, sitting the baby on her lap. "Speaking of bizarre behavior, you're usually not around this early. Not that I mind it when you come for a visit, but why are you here?"

Ginny fidgeted with the parchments, straightening their edges and smoothing out the curl in one, for that moment looking so much like Molly in a fret that Hermione couldn't help but smile. Unlike Molly, though, Ginny didn't hide behind distractions for long. She came right out with it. Six brothers made it tough to be reticent about anything. "Ron came by last night on his way to the Burrow. Said you two got in a big fight and you threw him out."

Hermione made a face and an offended huff, wrapping both arms around James. "_He_ stomped out, thank you."

"Yeah, I figured. He getting stroppy about your work on the Death Eater murders?" At Hermione's surprised look, Ginny sighed and sat up, pulling the sugar bowl out of James' reach. "Heard him arguing with Bill about it last week. He really doesn't get why you're putting so much effort into this." She ate a couple of sugar cubes, her face sad and her drooping eyes focused on the parchment in front of her. "I don't think he _can_ understand it, even if he wanted to. Out of all of us, he hates the Death Eaters most. Blames them for just about everything that's happened to us. And to you."

Hermione bent her head and sniffed James' hair, letting the soft scent of warm baby pull her mind away from too much thinking. She knew Ron had a deep-rooted antipathy towards the Death Eaters and supposed it wasn't undeserved. But when she remembered the fear and sense of hopelessness at knowing she was a target then because of what she was, she couldn't help but feel a little sympathy for those who were targets now for the same reason. She'd been tortured and cursed, she'd been injured and nearly killed, and she'd lost so many friends. But it was still murder.

She realized she'd spoken aloud when Ginny touched her hand, and she looked up to see a rueful understanding in Ginny's face. "I know," Ginny said. "I'll see if Harry can talk some sense into him. And if not, I'm still a dab hand at that Bat Bogey."

***

Hermione spent a couple of hours talking to Ginny and playing with James, then went to the office with a heart a little lighter. Even with Ginny's own experiences with the Death Eaters, her own pains and memories, she'd seemed to understand Hermione's need to work on this case, to _solve_ it, and having one person on her side made everything - the argument with Ron, the pressure from Giffin, all of it - easier for Hermione to bear.

Determined to get some progress made on her project, she put a large map up on the wall and stuck pushpins into the spots where each victim had been located. Selwyn, Alecto Carrow. Twelve other bodies in twelve other places. Out of a morbid sense of humor, she tapped each pushpin with her wand and transfigured the tips into little green snakes. It didn't help. Staring at the map only made her frustrated. There didn't seem to be a pattern, didn't seem to be any sort of method in the murders. Other than all of the victims being members of Voldemort's organization, there was no connection she could see.

She threw up her hands with a groan and stomped back to her desk, dropping into her chair so hard she thought she heard the wood pop. Tipping forward, she put her head on the desk. "It would be nice," she mumbled into her blotter, "if I could get a little _consideration_ from my murderer. A little help, maybe?"

"Miss?"

At first she thought she'd imagined the sound, the word said so softly it could have been her hair rustling over her ears. Then it was repeated - "Miss?" - in a louder, anxious tone, and she looked up to see Maddy. Maddy in that saffron-dyed sari, in her office. The pop she'd thought she'd heard had been Maddy's appearance, and her first, terrified thought shoved her up out of her chair, her heart racing.

"_Draco_." She rushed around the desk and almost tripped to her knees, grabbing Maddy by thin, bony shoulders. "Is Draco all right, is he hurt? Why are you here?"

Maddy blinked up at her, leaning back against her grip. "Master Draco is fine," she said, voice confused and ears twitching. "He sent Maddy shopping, but Maddy has no money, and Miss was helpful before, so Maddy thought perhaps Miss might be able to help again." She looked up at Hermione with wide, hopeful eyes. "Does Miss know where Maddy can get brandy without money?"


	6. Chapter 6

**SIX**

Draco jerked open a cabinet, then a second and a third, swearing under his breath as he rummaged through each, cups and plates and bowls rattling and clinking against each other every time he slammed another door closed. He'd sent Maddy out with strict instructions not to return without the largest bottle of brandy she could carry. It wasn't until she'd left that he'd realized he'd forgotten to give her money, but he still expected her to bring him back a bottle, regardless. She'd been given orders. He wanted, _needed_ a drink, and until Maddy returned, he raided the kitchen, searching for anything, even a bottle of cooking sherry, that had a kick of alcohol to it.

He snatched another cabinet open, and gave a crow of triumph when he spotted a dusty bottle in the far corner. Ignoring the shatter of a bowl when he knocked it to the floor in his haste, he pulled the bottle out of the cabinet, then stared at it with disdain. "Olive oil? Are you serious? Are you quite fucking _serious_?" His voice rose on each word, rose to a shout, and he spun around with the bottle's neck in his hand, whipped around and flung it against the far wall of the kitchen.

The force of his throw sent glass exploding outwards, shards flying across the room. Instinctively, he raised his arms and shielded his face, yelping when tiny bits of the bottle thumped into his robes, a few spiking through and pricking his hands and arms. He shuddered, memories whipping through him - the destruction of the chandelier in the drawing room that had scraped and torn at his face with razor-sharp crystals, the slice and slash of Potter's damned spell that had ripped his face and chest like wet meat, the blood on his hands and hair and robes, blood sticking to him, dripping from him, slick and hot on his skin. Draco gulped for air, the scar on his chest aching, and he slid to his knees, one hand pressed to his sternum as he fought to control his breath.

He _needed_ a drink. Needed to eliminate those old memories, needed to drown the newer ones of his mother crumpled on the grass, a dead owl on the terrace, Granger's pitying eyes. Needed to drown out the insistent call of magic burned into his arm, the quiet thrumming ache in his flesh, the prickle and itch of his skin.

Somewhere, deep inside, where he hid everything he didn't want to think about, Draco knew he was developing a problem. When he woke up with his hands shaking and his chest tight and his first thought was that he needed a drink, when he fell into bed at night only half-conscious and thoroughly foxed, he knew he had a problem. But he hadn't found anything else yet that would eliminate the screaming nightmares or the searing pain in his arm when his master's call came again.

If it _was_ his master. The Dark Lord was dead, as far as he knew. The man who'd been born Tom Riddle, that man was dead. He'd seen the body himself. But someone, somehow, had re-activated the Marks, was recalling the Death Eaters, and that was a magic that Draco knew very few people would be capable of commanding. That very few people would be mad enough to _want_ to command. The reappearance of the Mark in his arm and the dream-figure who'd told him 'welcome back' spoke to someone being just that insane, though.

Insane, and hunting those who'd failed the Dark Lord. His breath steadied, Draco pressed both shoulders to the wall and thumped his head against it. He suspected that on a list of terribly disappointing servants, the Malfoy family ranked in the top three. With his mother's recent death and his father's disappearance years before, of course, there was only one disappointing Malfoy left. Draco wondered how much time he had before someone came to kill him. Wondered if Narcissa had been a warning.

The owl he'd received that morning clearly had been. Same handwriting on the note, same smell of poison on the owl's feathers, same information and threat. Jugson. Slayton-by-Thames. No one can stop revenge.

Draco shifted, leaning back against the wall and pulling his knees up to wrap both arms around his shins. Why was _he_ the one getting these notes and warnings? He couldn't do a damned thing about it, and if his mystery correspondent was trying to lure him out, that was a doomed endeavor. Also quite pointless. Narcissa's murder had made it clear that he was defenseless in his own home - he touched the band around his neck, swallowing hard and feeling the metal dig into his throat - so he could be killed at any time. The Ministry's 'protective custody' was more than useless. "Should have just gone to Azkaban," he muttered, closing his eyes and slumping against the wall.

"I bet your bed's more comfortable," a voice answered him, and Draco snapped his eyes open, looking wildly for the source. His first, terrified thought, that someone had snuck into the Manor, had him slapping at an inner pocket of his robes in a desperate grasp for a wand he didn't bother to carry any more. Movement caught his eye and he spun on his knees, facing it.

Granger. Standing in the doorway of the kitchen, the smallest twist of a smile on her face. For once, he was glad to see her. Her, and not his nightmares. Draco exhaled sharply and curled over, placing both hands on the cold stone tiles of the floor, letting the chill settle him. "It's really not very nice to sneak up on a man like that," he mumbled at the floor. The tick-tap of footsteps neared him, and he saw a pointed shoe pushing a piece of glass away from his hands.

"Maybe not," Granger said, her voice amused. "But you're cute when you're twitchy, ferret." Draco jerked his head up, glaring at her, his ears heating with aggravation. He was _never_ going to live that down. Pushing off the floor with both hands, he got to his feet in one motion, a smooth glide that brought him upright and looming over her. To his satisfaction, she took a step back, with a look of surprise that seemed to have a hint of admiration about it. "That was ... almost elegant."

He dusted his hands off on his robes and pushed up his sleeves, checking for scrapes on his arms from the shattered bottle, rubbing thin trails of dried blood off the few that had appeared. "Spend enough time kneeling while you beg for your life, you learn to get up gracefully." Granger's expression flickered at his words, and he tensed, expecting her to fumble for some sort of comforting platitude, some attempt at jollying him away from the bitterness he knew had come through so clear in his voice, but after she looked at his face for a moment, she seemed to read something in his eyes that warned her away from any such thing. Relieved that she wasn't going to bother, he didn't protest when she reached for his arm.

"Don't panic," she told him sternly, seeming to assume he would despite the evidence that he wasn't. "I'm getting out my wand, going to heal these up." Her fingers curled around his wrist and he let her shift his arm, rotate it until his palm faced the ceiling. She traced the tip of her wand over the small wounds, her brows furrowed with concentration as she cast her charms.

The soft feel of her hand on his arm made his mind stutter, and he groped for something to say that would get her to release him, even if he didn't particularly want her to let go. He really didn't want to explore why. "I was planning to have Maddy fetch me that Coagulating Cream, Granger. You don't have to do this." His brows knotted and he looked around the kitchen, grateful for the excuse to distract himself. "Actually, where _is_ Maddy? Couldn't take this long to do a little shopping."

Granger poked one cut with her wand, making him hiss and jerk his arm in her grip. "You didn't give her any money, prat. Hard to buy brandy when you don't have any funds." She pulled his arm closer and bent her head over it, her hair falling to brush against the inside of his elbow. A sudden, thoroughly unexpected frisson sped through him at the sensation, and he closed his eyes, swallowing hard enough that he almost didn't hear her continue speaking. "You owe me twenty pounds, by the way."

"What's that in real money?"

The slight sway of her hair and the tightening of her fingers around his wrist told him well enough that he'd just said something irritating. "It _is_ real, Malfoy. It's Muggle money." She was grinding her teeth, he guessed from the taut tone of her voice, and he didn't need to see her face to know that she'd just narrowed her eyes at him. He'd seen that expression often enough at school, the expression that said, without the slightest qualm, _you're a pure-blooded, close-minded, bigoted arsehole_. He'd seen it right before she'd slapped him years ago, seen it in every confrontation he and his boys had with her and hers.

Draco couldn't remember often in their history when she hadn't given him a look like that. At the Battle of Hogwarts, he'd caught her eye after the fighting, caught her watching him as he sat with his parents. For just a moment, she'd looked, just a bit, like she might have been not entirely angry with him, and then Lucius had put one hand on his shoulder and Draco looked away.

Or here, at his home, when his aunt tortured her. He'd watched. He'd watched, forcing himself to see it, to see Granger writhe and scream on the carpet. Bella had cut her, and her blood mixed with the intricate patterns woven into the threads. Behind the sealed doors of the drawing room, that carpet still covered the floor, her blood still stained it, and Draco remembered how she'd looked at him then. How she'd held his gaze until another curse and pain forced her to close her eyes and scream.

His fingers tightened, curling into a fist, and he bowed his head. "Sorry," he mumbled, his throat closing around the word. "I'm sorry."

Granger shook her head, her hair tickling along his arm, and she finished up her spellwork. "Don't bother," she said, not understanding the true basis of his apology. "Shouldn't expect more from you, I suppose. Not _real_ money, honestly. It's not like Muggles are _imaginary_." Her grip tightened for just a moment before she released his arm with a movement that was very close to a shove. "You killed enough of us to know that much."

Draco jerked away from her, glass crunching under his boots as he spun, speaking to her over his shoulder. "I've never killed _anyone_. Of all the sins I've committed in my life, Granger, of every crime that got me locked up in this house, murder has never been in that list."

She folded her arms and stared at him, her face hard. "You tried, didn't you? Nearly killed Katie Bell, almost killed Ron, both of those because you were trying to kill Dumbledore."

The accusative tone in her voice, the glint in her dark eyes, contrasted only too sharply with the gentle touch she'd used on the small wounds in his arms, and in a burst of confusion, Draco whipped to face her, his robes swirling around him, and snarled with his face twisted up. "Tried? Fuck, yes. _Yes_, I tried. And that is the operative word." Without realizing it, he stepped forward as he spoke, his eyes locked on hers, the muscles in his forearms twitching as he flexed his hands in an unconscious grip for his wand. "I tried. Over and over, that whole year. Mice, owls, anything small I could Stun and take with me to hide. I tried to kill them, tried and tried. You have to _really_ want it to kill something that way, did you know that? You have to want it so much that it completely fills you up, that it takes you over, every inch and atom in you desperate for it. It's a lot like being in love, Granger, it has to fill you up until you can't think of anything else, until everything about and around you becomes bent on one solid purpose, and I couldn't do it."

She backed up as he advanced, until he had her pinned against the counter, his hands flat on the marble surface at either side of her body, until he was close enough that he could see gold and green flecks in her widened eyes, until he could see a small flicker of fear deep in them. "I couldn't kill so much as a mouse, and I knew. I _knew_ on that tower I wouldn't be able to kill him. I couldn't _want_ it enough." To his shame, the spillage of words brought an equal, heated spill from his eyes, and his voice broke, shaking around each word as he admitted to her what he hated admitting to himself. "I couldn't let it fill me up, I couldn't _want_ it as badly as I needed to, and all I could think was that I didn't love my parents enough to save them."

Granger's eyes widened even further, her lashes trembling, and she searched his face with a flicking gaze. With the slightest change in her stance, the slightest tightening of her eyes, Draco sensed her movement before she made it but he still flinched, his eyes closing with an expectation of a wand shoved up under his chin or a violent push to the chest. Instead, her fingers curled into the material of his robes, and she shook him. Hard.

"You-you-you _idiot_!" She shook him until his hair fell into his eyes, the ends dampening almost instantly when they swept across the tears on his cheekbones, and his teeth rattled despite his clenched jaw. "You were what, sixteen? You got sent on a mission that _nobody_ could have fulfilled! So you couldn't kill Dumbledore. That _doesn't_ mean you didn't love your parents. It means you weren't a monster, you weren't a murderer. You were a terrified boy who made some terrible mistakes, and it would _not_ have been your fault."

Draco flinched again, the word _Mum_ escaping through lips he'd pressed flat in hopes of preventing just that, and Granger's hands tightened in his robes. "If that's what you thought then and if that's what you think now, you're a fool. That wouldn't have been your fault, your mother's death wasn't your fault."

_Your fault. You're not a killer, Draco. Her death is in your hands. Not your fault._ Voices, words, whispers circled through Draco's mind. His hands came up, wrapping around Granger's wrists, and he bowed his head. "Shut up." He meant to shout it, but his throat closed as his arm shrieked with pain, and the words twisted into a groan.

Granger's jaw snapped shut with an audible click and she hesitated in the middle of shaking him again. "Malfoy?"

Teeth sunk into his lip and shoulders curling as he forced back another groan, he opened his eyes, locked his vision on his forearm, on his exposed skin and Mark. Granger followed his gaze and gasped. The snake writhed, tail slipping up through the skull's open mouth and slithering out through an empty eye socket. Around the taut and straining tendons in his wrist, the snake's fangs seemed to pierce through translucent skin. "He's calling."

Granger released his robes in a convulsive movement and dragged her arms down with a strength that surprised him. His grip on her wrists broke and he staggered back from her to stumble into the wall, his eyes still locked on his arm. It seared and burned and flared until he wouldn't have been shocked to see flames bursting from his skin, and Draco clenched his fist and tensed his muscles, focusing on that to stop the scream. "He's calling. Whoever the fuck he is. _Maddy_!" he shouted at the ceiling, forgetting in his pain that she was off the grounds. "Brandy!"

"Malfoy?"

He turned to look at Granger.

***

He woke up.

Eyes snapping open, heart racing, head pounding, hip throbbing, he woke up. He hurt and ached, but his arm was silent, the Mark was still. He stared at the ceiling of a darkened room, watched reflected candlelight dance across it, and gathered his senses into one place.

His ceiling. His room. His bed. He rubbed his forehead and pushed up onto his elbows, taking stock. Dark green sheet pulled to his waist, no robes or shirt, and a shift of his legs told him no trousers either. His fingers clamped in the sheets as a small, soft noise came from his left, and he turned his head, stifling a whimper as the movement set his skull to ringing. Curled up in a chair beside him, legs crossed at the ankles on the end of the bed, his shirt crumpled under her head as a pillow. Granger. Next to her, on the low bedside table, sat a tall, half-empty bottle of brandy and a short, squat glass, half-full.

He licked his lips at the sight of it, tasting a faint remnant of brandy on his skin. Judging from the state of the bottle, he'd drunk quite a bit of it, or had it poured down his throat. The combination of 'Granger', 'brandy', and 'naked' scuttled through his mind - for a moment, making his heart both race and stop as he wondered what the hell had happened and if it had been good for her - and he snapped upright to stare at her, appalled at himself. His already-aching head screamed in protest at the quick action, and he clamped both hands to his temples, groaning.

The sound stirred Granger without waking her, and Draco watched her nestle into his shirt, watched her rub her cheek on the material, heard her say his name in her sleep.

His name. She said his name.

It startled him enough that he forgot the throb in his head and hips, and he sat up straighter, drawing his knees up under the sheet, letting his hands dangle loose between them. Hermione Granger, asleep by his bed. The soft, elongated vowels of his name in her voice. Draco added it all up and decided he hadn't woken up after all. He was dreaming, and even if his subconscious had picked _her_, it was one of the most pleasant dreams he'd had in a long while, and he wasn't going to give that up. God only know if it would switch to one of the bad ones, and he'd far rather watch her sleep than watch her die.

Granger shifted, and so did her robes, falling open over her shins, gapping at her throat. Draco followed the line of her legs up her shins and over her knees, took a long look at the curve of her lower thighs. He kept looking, let his gaze rest there, remembered how warm she'd been when he'd held her in the garden, and when she moved and her arm pushed her breasts high under her robes, his body responded with the beginnings of an erection.

Draco shivered at the tensing, twisting sensation low in his abdomen, pressed his lips together and inhaled deep through his nose, held his breath when Granger murmured his name - his _first_ name - again. His cock twitched and he shuddered with it. He slid one hand under the sheet and cupped his groin, disbelief at what he'd felt sending him to _feel_, to check and make certain his mind hadn't snapped. It hadn't, he was hard, and as long as he was dreaming, it couldn't hurt to do something about it.

The slide of his fingers across his skin sent a pulse through him, blood speeding low in his body to fill and stiffen tissues. He widened his thighs for better access, cupped his scrotum in his fingers, and stroked his thumb down the length of his cock. At the head, he drew his foreskin back gently and circled the ridge. With two fingers, he ran his touch over and around his shaft, tracing veins, tickling his skin.

He tipped his chin to his shoulder to watch this dream-Granger for inspiration. She wouldn't have been his first pick, but since the only other woman he'd seen in years had been his mother, he supposed he couldn't entirely blame his fantasies. His erection flagged slightly at the thought of his mother, the reminder of her death, and he shook himself, reaching down to roll his balls in his fingers and boost his arousal, staring at Granger and her legs, exposed up to the thighs as she shifted in her sleep. She _was_ pretty enough, especially now, asleep and with her mouth shut, and Draco wondered how much prettier she might be with her mouth open and fastened around his cock.

His body clearly liked that mental image, if the sudden, near-painful throb under his hand was anything to judge by, and Draco raised an eyebrow at himself, then went with it. It wasn't as though there was any harm in it. He was dreaming, after all. Hardly responsible for his dreams. He rolled back into his pillows, turned his head to keep Granger in his view, and stroked, slow and steady. He kept a firm grip, pushed his foreskin up and pulled it back, bit his lip at each slide over the protruding ridge at the head of his cock.

Granger murmured again and stretched in the chair, her robes shifting to expose even more of her body. While she'd picked up a light tan on her face and arms from what he had to assume was field work, none of that was evident on her legs. Pale like warmed milk and looking nearly as delicious, her thighs caught his attention, drew his eyes upwards to the shadowed curves at their tops, and Draco sped up his movements.

Rapid, short strokes brought him to the edge, his abdomen tightening, his eyelids fluttering. The sheet over his upraised and splayed knees puffed and fell with each movement, each pump of his arm. Close, flying close, flying close enough that he was ready to touch the sun, and he focused on Granger's face as the pulse of orgasm took over him. He groaned, come spattered the underside of the sheet and dripped over his fingers, and she opened her eyes. "Malfoy, you're awa--oh my _god_, what are you doing?"

Fuck. He wasn't dreaming. This was real, and it was too late. Too late to stop, _far_ too late, and all Draco could do was tip his head back and stare at his ceiling until the last few spasms left him. When he could move, he looked at her, now standing several feet from the bed, her collar clutched to her throat, her eyes wide and mouth open. Draco pushed up onto his elbows, rubbing his hand clean on the sheet. Despite the heat of his skin, a mixed flush of release and embarrassment, he raised an eyebrow at her, and asked, in his best Lucius-mimicked and chilled tones, "So, you going to get me a towel or what?"

***

She'd said she'd go downstairs and wait for him there - at least, he assumed that's what she'd said through the high-pitched shrieking and the flail of robes - and Draco took a quick shower, one that involved much less washing and much more personal chastisement. It had been stupid, it had been extremely ill-timed, and if it hadn't been one of the best orgasms he'd had since he figured out _how_ to have them, he'd regret it. As it was, he knew he wasn't going to regret, and wasn't going to forget. "On the other hand," he told himself as he pulled on a loose pair of linen trousers and a shirt old enough that it had faded into a pastel green, "I doubt she'll forget either. Probably not good."

Forgoing the outer robes he normally wore - she'd already seen everything he tried to cover up and then some - he grabbed the brandy bottle and went downstairs, expecting to find Granger in his study. Instead, he found her outside the drawing room, her hands pressed to the thick, carved panels. Her fingers trailed over the designs in short, jerky movements, betraying anxiety, though he wasn't certain if it was what she'd seen upstairs or memories of that room that made her nervous. He took a deep swig straight from the bottle and silently moved up beside her to lean against the wall.

She jumped and looked slantways at him, then her eyes dropped to his groin. Anxious over what she'd seen upstairs, then. Before he could make a comment, she flushed and jerked her gaze back to the door, and he stayed silent. "I Stunned you," she told the elaborate panel, running her fingers over a carved hind and hunter. "Be-before. Your eyes had gone all ... strange. Scared. And it was _moving_." Her eyes flickered towards him, towards his left arm, and Draco folded it against his chest, hiding his Mark with the bottle clutched to his shoulder. "I didn't know it moved. I knew it hurt when-when he called but I didn't know it moved. I thought maybe you might try to go. Be forced to answer him, and I couldn't think what to do, so I Stunned you."

That explained his aching head and why he thought he'd been dreaming, but Draco refrained from commenting. Granger looked like she had more to say. He took a long drink from the bottle, then held it out in her line of vision. Even as she shook her head, she dragged one hand off the door and wrapped it around the bottle, pulling the brandy away from him. "I got you up to your room, I figured it was yours, at least. It was all green and-and-and Quidditchy. The Snitch in the trophy case, y'know. So I put you in there, but you'd landed in something on the floor in the kitchen, some sort of oil, and your sheets were so nice. I didn't want them ruined, so I took your robes off. And Maddy came back with your brandy and--" She laughed, short and fast, her breath rapid. "And she was pretty put out to find me in your room, let me tell you, but I was already there, so I sent her to clean up the kitchen. She's probably done by now, you've been asleep for hours."

She took a swallow of the brandy, a long drink that overflowed her lips and dripped off her chin, then pushed the bottle at him and wiped her sleeve across her face. "She didn't ask any questions, which I suppose is a good thing in a house-elf. Not like me, I ask too many. I want to know too much, like why you cremated Winifred, why you were-were-were doing _that_, why you got that damned owl, who killed your mum, and who wants the Death Eaters dead _and_ who's wanting them alive." She slapped her hands against the door and slumped, her forehead resting on the haunch of a deer. "Or maybe I don't ask enough, or don't ask the right ones, because I'm having so much trouble with this case, and I'm running out of _time_."

Draco set the bottle down on a narrow table against the wall. The small, pathetic sound of her voice at the end of her little diatribe actually made him feel sorry for her. "A couple of those I can't answer, and at least one I _won't_, on the grounds that ... well, the last time I testified against myself didn't work out so well." Granger rocked her head on the door, muttering under her breath, and Draco felt a small smile hit him. At least she hadn't thrown anything at him or slapped him for it, and she hadn't run out of the Manor screaming. As long as he could keep her relatively calm and distracted, maybe she'd forget to interrogate him about upstairs. "As for why I cremated Winifred, that one's easy. Winifred's not her name, Mum just always had trouble pronouncing it. Vindhya. And Maddy's actually Medha."

Granger jerked her head up to give him a sharp look, and he nodded. "About ninety years ago, my great-grandmother was studying various serpent-related cults and religions. Aztec, Minoan, you name it. She was in India for Naga Panchami, a cobra festival, I believe. Wizards in India generally follow the caste system, mostly Brahmins, of course, and in that caste system are the untouchables, the outcasts. Most people think they're the lowest caste, but in wizarding society, there was an even lower one." Granger made a soft sound of realization and Draco smiled. "House-elves, right. One of the local wizard-Brahmins was bitten by a cobra during the festival and died. His two elves were going to be separated and given to his sons, and they were quite upset about it. The sons, not the elves. They were going to free Maddy and Winifred, and turn them loose. It's tough enough for humans to survive homeless and hungry there, and once my ancestor found out ... well, she stole them."

Hermione's sudden burst of laughter was gratifying, especially since he thought it meant she might have at least _temporarily_ forgotten the awkwardness of earlier. "All right, she didn't exactly _steal_ them. They would have protested that. She bought them. They were perfectly happy to come to England with her, since she promised she'd never try to give them clothes, they'd have a family to work for who appreciated proper servants, and they could make all the curries they wanted. And believe me, they did. I had a cast-iron stomach by the time I was six."

She laughed again and turned more towards him, lifting her head off the panels of the door, which he took as a good sign that she was calming down. Draco nodded towards the study, hoping to move her away from the drawing room before she noticed the spell that sealed the door shut. "Come on. You showed up here for a reason and I don't think it was to--" _feature in my latest wank fantasy_ "--ask me about house-elf funerals or hit me with a Stunner. Though it's entirely possible with you."


	7. Chapter 7

**SEVEN**

Malfoy pushed off the wall and headed for the study, and Hermione followed without thinking or paying much attention to her surroundings. His information about Maddy's background and history was surprising and fascinating, but she knew he hadn't been telling her all of it just because of her work with house-elves or her question about Winifred's cremation. She wasn't stupid, and she knew he'd been trying to distract her from what she'd witnessed in his room, and she was grateful for it. Even if it hadn't entirely worked.

It hadn't worked at all. She still had plenty of other questions, plenty of other things to wonder about, but every time she tried to focus on those, her thoughts slipped to Malfoy. She'd missed most of it in her sleep, only caught the crucial, critical moment, but it was stuck in her mind. The heave of his chest, the candlelight dancing on the long, silvery scar across his torso. The column of his throat when his head tipped back, the taut muscle of his bicep. His deep groan of release. She wasn't a stranger to seeing a man masturbate - Ron had a penchant for laying hands on himself whenever he was alone for twenty minutes, and she'd walked in on him more than once - but she'd never had her own body respond like that. Never felt that instant twist of desire, never had her knickers dampen so quickly. Never wanted to Banish a sheet so badly in her life.

Lost in the replay of those last few seconds, the few where she'd fled across the room to stop herself from moving closer, the few where she'd watched him with eyes wide and mouth gaping in shock from his actions and her reactions, she stumbled into a chair. A hand caught her elbow and almost immediately released her, and she looked up to see Malfoy moving away, his ears and cheekbones tinted pink. He sat behind his desk and she dropped into the chair she'd tripped over. Malfoy's gaze dropped and she followed the line of his vision, then yanked her robes over her legs hurriedly and cursed herself for picking one of her shorter ones to wear to work that morning. "So you have Hindu house-elves!" she said, speaking rapidly to stop him from saying anything about _that_. He'd ignored it in the corridor and therefore so would she. Better if it wasn't discussed. Safer. Saner. "Standard C of E, myself. Church of England," she added, expecting that a lifelong wizard wouldn't recognize the abbreviation. "And you're Catholic? I suppose that's not entirely unusual, there was the Fat Friar at school, but I wouldn't have expected it from you. Pure-blood. Wizard. All that."

Malfoy gave her a confused look, his head tipping slightly. Maybe she'd been babbling. She'd probably been babbling. It was almost a certainty, actually, but he seemed not to have noticed too much, because his eyes lit with realization. "Oh, at Mum's funeral? The priest?" When she nodded, he leaned back in his chair, swinging his legs up to rest his calves on the corner of the desk, his ankles crossed in mid-air. He hadn't bothered to put shoes on, she noted, and she couldn't really blame him for it. The carpets in the Manor were ridiculously soft. After she'd put him to bed upstairs, she'd given in to temptation, taken off her shoes, and wriggled her toes in the carpets for a good five minutes of utter bliss. Malfoy probably did that a lot, with his long, high-arched feet, and she only realized she was staring at them when he spoke again, startling her.

"Not really Catholic," he said, pulling out his cigarette case and lighting one with a match. "Not the way you're thinking of it. I mean, yeah, I was an altar boy, but my altar had a cauldron and a wand, not a crucifix. Some sort of mix between that and magic. Never really thought about it, never paid much attention. It's just something I was raised with."

Malfoy's relaxed posture, despite the stiff hold of his shoulders that said it was forced, encouraged her to make an attempt at her own. She drew her feet up into the chair and tucked her robes under her toes, watching him as he tapped ashes into a glass tray on his desk. As he moved, his sleeve shifted, his Mark coming into view. A thin stream of smoke rose up from his hand, and it swayed just enough to make her think there was a draft in the room, then he brought the cigarette up to his mouth and she saw the tremor in his arm.

She toyed with her necklace, sweeping the pendant along the chain. "Seems to me that there's a lot of things you believed just because you were raised that way." She'd meant to say it gently, but the words came out even more soft than she'd planned. After everything she'd learned about Malfoy, everything she'd seen, everything after the war and here in his home, it was tough to be harsh with him without a solid reason. Not that there weren't _plenty_ of reasons to dislike him, but it was difficult to think of them, even with that horrible Mark in his arm, when she'd seen his eyes softened and unwary, watched him sleep, held him as he wept over his mother's body.

He'd stiffened at her words, sat still and frozen staring at the far wall. Maybe she shouldn't have said that. She leaned forward, her pendant clutched in her hand. "Malfoy, I'm-I'm sorry. I shouldn't--" He held up one hand and she stopped, her jaw shutting with a click of teeth.

Malfoy stayed quiet for a long moment, only moving enough to smoke. Finally, he blinked, his head dipped, and he cleared his throat. "There were," he said, his voice taut. "Quite a few things." He slid his legs off the desk, crushed out his cigarette, and stood to pace the study. "Let's see, where to start? Pure-bloods are superior, Mudbloods are worse than Squibs, Muggles should be crushed into submission. Magic should only be used by those who deserve it. The interbreeding of _true_ wizards with lower classes is weakening our society and draining our power."

As he talked, his voice took on a familiar cadence and chill, and it struck her how much he resembled his father. She'd always _known_ that, of course, since no one could even _glance_ at Draco without seeing Lucius, but when he talked like that, so matter-of-fact and blasé about dogmas that had plagued their world for so long, the resemblance was so much more pronounced. It was like Malfoy was just a mirror of his father, a reflection of something not really himself. She wondered if he'd have been such a vicious young man if he hadn't been exposed to so much--

"Dragonshit, Granger."

She blinked and dragged herself out of her thoughts, looked over her shoulder to see Malfoy leaning on the back of a sofa, his fingers white-knuckled on the dark upholstery. His pale gaze focused on her face, locked on her eyes. "It's dragonshit," he repeated. "A series of lies and rubbish I learned at my father's knee. Some people get taught how to play chess or-or-or how to cook." He slapped the sofa and straightened up, jerking his sleeve to his elbow. "I got taught how to hate."

She winced as he laughed, the sound as sharp and pointed as the bottle he'd broken in the kitchen. "And what for? A load of mistakes. We're better than them, Draco, we're special, we're _gods_ to the puling, petulant masses, and one day they'll see the error of their ways, if we have to show them by force." His eyes darkened and he dipped his head, his hair falling over his face. "Y'know, I'd have done anything for my father, and nearly did, but with that sort of legacy, sometimes I wonder why. Everything he told me was wrong, and he died before he could figure that out for himself like I did. Sometimes I'm a little bit glad he's dead, and sometimes I wish he was still alive just so I could throw it all in his face and show him what those _beliefs_ did to us."

Hermione pulled at her necklace, plucked at a thread on her robes, and turned away, taking her eyes off Malfoy. _Sometimes I'm a little bit glad he's dead._ She couldn't let him keep thinking that way. Couldn't let him keep hating himself and his family for things that no longer applied. The information she was about to give was highly classified, extremely secretive, and she knew it was very possible she'd lose her job for it. "He's not," she whispered, staring at her knees.

A few seconds of silence passed, then he spoke. "What?" The voice behind her was harsh, unstrung like a cello snapping under the bow, and despite the thick carpet and Malfoy's bare feet, his steps came down hard, the sound thudding in her skull. Both of his hands clenched on the chair back, making the frame of it creak, and he leaned down over her shoulder, his breath stirring her hair. "_What_ did you say, Granger?"

She hunched into her robes and tugged at a lock of her hair, wrapping her fingers around it. "The accident during transport to Azkaban, your father getting lost at sea - it was fabricated." Hermione took a deep breath and sat up straight, turning her head to meet Malfoy's eyes, the tip of her nose nearly brushing his from proximity. "Your father's not dead."

It was the long, smoldering glower in his eyes that warned her, the slow shift from palest grey to storm dark. Malfoy had been born a wizard, bred a wizard, had magic in his blood and bones for generations back, and he didn't need a wand or a cauldron for magic to rise up around him. His eyes went dark, his face went pale, and Hermione sucked in a sharp breath as the lights in the room flickered, the flame on every candle and wall-torch suddenly dancing with a surge of power.

Malfoy whipped around the chair and grabbed her arms, yanked her to her feet and past that, until only her toes brushed the thick pile of the carpet. He held her up, his fingers bruising on her biceps, and he pulled her close to him, her breasts flattened against his chest, his breath hot and rapid on her cheeks. He searched her gaze, his eyes flicking back and forth, then he sucked in air and expelled it on a half-moaned murmur. "_Legilimens_."

She didn't have enough time to gasp, much less to throw mental shields up, and she'd never been very skilled at Occlumency as it was. Malfoy drove into her mind and she froze, her eyes locked on his. He speared in, tore through her surface thoughts of surprise and fear, and into deeper layers. The weeks of negotiation and testimony that commuted his father's sentence from Dementor's Kiss to imprisonment to protection. The plan to fake his disappearance and death, to hide one of Voldemort's highest-ranked servants from retribution from _either_ side. The wards and charms around the small house in-- "_No_!"

With a piercing cry of effort, Hermione slammed up the best shields she could form, threw Draco out of her mind, shaking and desperate to keep him from trying again. It wasn't _safe_, he couldn't _know_, and there was more, far more, than his father's location that she wanted to keep hidden from him.

"Dammit, bitch, _tell_ me!" Malfoy shoved her away, pushed her to fall back into the chair, and without warning, he staggered against his desk, gasping and clutching at the band around his neck. He choked and retched, dropped to his knees and scrabbled at his throat, hooking his thumbs under the band and struggling for breath.

The silver metal flared bright, shifted to blue, and Hermione stared in horrified, sickened fascination. She knew the principle behind the inhibitor bands, but had never seen one in action, and even if Malfoy's sudden intrusion into her mind deserved some sort of retribution, this wasn't it. She slid out of her chair, slid to her knees and reached for him, stretched to touch his shoulder. "Malfoy? Mal-_Draco_."

He slapped at her hand with a snarl and leaned into the desk, pressing his side against it as he coughed and choked. The inhibitor band faded and Malfoy sat up, wiping his sleeve across his mouth and eyes. He glared at her and she reared back, the anger and pain in his eyes almost pushing her over. "Get out," he growled. "Get the hell out of my house."

***

She didn't go home, didn't go to the office. As soon as she ran off the grounds of Malfoy Manor, past the weak boundary wards to the long, curving drive, past the tall hedges, she turned on the spot and Apparated straight to the Burrow. She burst into the kitchen and burst into tears. Molly, her hands in a huge bowl of cookie dough, gaped at her as she flung herself into a chair and put her head on the table with her hands shoved into her hair. Molly's gentle, if confused, question of "Tea, dear?" only made her cry harder, but she sniffled out a grateful yes.

As Molly cleaned up and put the kettle on, Hermione snagged a dish towel and wiped her cheeks, then poured out the whole story. She talked about Narcissa's death - "I was right _there_, Molly!" - the problems with Ron and their fight and their relationship, the murdered Death Eaters, the _escaped_ Death Eaters, the long hours at the office, the lack of hours at home, the hours spent at Malfoy's.

Hermione talked about Malfoy.

Malfoy's drinking. Malfoy's house-elves. Malfoy's past catching up to his present. The scars - his obvious, physical ones, and his hidden, emotional ones - the dead messenger owl, the call and pain she'd witnessed. Malfoy. Malfoy again. And Malfoy.

"You're saying a lot about him, dear." Molly folded a dish towel, unfolded it, refolded it, all without looking at Hermione. "Quite a lot, actually."

Hermione shoved her hair off her face and scrubbed at her eyes, then swirled the dregs of her tea around the bottom of the cup. "He could have so much usefulness to my case, Molly. Could contribute so much to _solving_ this. If he'd told us at the time about the owl he got, we could maybe have saved Selwyn, or caught this madman without giving him the chance to kill again."

"I see. And how is Malfoy useful? He's been shut up in his home for so long, and your team has had no prior luck getting any information out of him. I can't see any reason you'd need to spend so much time talking to him. Maybe you were thinking to set him up as bait, lure this murderer out. Right?"

Molly's tone was bland and matter-of-fact, and Hermione stared at her, a sick disgust roiling in her stomach. "Bait? You want me to use him as _bait_? Risk his life, deliberately put him in danger?" She shoved up out of the chair and slapped her hands on the table. "So Ron got his attitude from _you_, then. Go ahead and let them die off, let them get killed! No one cares about _them_. No one cares about _him_." She straightened up, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "Well, _I_ care. I care about what happens to them and I care about what happens to him."

Molly bunched the towel up in her fingers, watching Hermione with downturned lips. "Care about him?" Her nails scraped the table as she pulled the fabric into her palms, fisting it tight. "Or care _for_ him?"

"_What_?" Hermione tugged at the pendant around her neck, clutched at her hair, and gaped at the woman sitting at the table and staring at her with narrowed eyes. Molly Weasley, the woman she considered the next best thing to her own mother, the witch she'd tried so hard to emulate for the sake of her boyfriend's comfort and care, was glaring at her with a look Hermione recognized. It was the same look Molly had given her years and years before, when Rita Skeeter had made up those vicious, horrible lies, and Hermione shook her head in disbelief. "Molly, how could you even think that?"

"Oh, I've talked to Ron." Molly nodded, the towel bunched up so tightly in her hands that it was almost invisible. "Say his name in your sleep? Rush right over there at the first _hint_ of trouble? Go to his mother's funeral because _you_ are the only one who cared?" Her eyes narrowed further and she stood up slowly, leaning on the table. "And you told me yourself, just now. Stripped him down and put him to bed, slept at his side all day to keep the boggarts away. Sounds like you care _for_ him, Miss Granger."

Hermione sucked in a breath, shaking her head in denial. "No. No, Molly, it's not like that. It's...." She tried to say something, anything, that could convince Molly, and she couldn't. Couldn't think of anything but Malfoy's grey eyes and the rare, fleeting moments when she'd seen him smile. The silence stretched too long and Molly pulled up to her full height.

"Get out of my house."

***

When upset, when confused, when worried or agitated, Hermione always returned to the same behavior, the same habits. She went to the library and wandered the aisles, trailing her fingers over the spines of books read so often their spines had gone soft as velvet, losing herself in the darkened, hushed stacks. When she'd fight with Ron or Harry, she'd go to the section of ancient runes, and when she'd have a long day at the office, she'd go to magical creatures. Arithmancy was reserved for problems with her parents, and wizarding history for general, unnamable upsets.

There wasn't a section for being thrown out of the Burrow because she couldn't honestly say that she wasn't thinking about Draco Malfoy a lot. Because she couldn't say that she only cared about his well-being, not about him. For him. No section in any library in any city in any world covered the circumstance of realizing that one was attracted to a lifelong enemy, and that one was apparently the last to realize it, but if there had been, Hermione would have shot straight to it and never left. As it was, she roamed without purpose or thought.

How had it happened? How had she not noticed? Everyone else had, it seemed. Ron, Molly, maybe even Ginny and Harry. She tapped her nails on a shelf, drumming her fingers on the wood. Had _he_ noticed? Had Malfoy noticed? Was _that_ the explanation behind his solo session - had it really been only - a few hours before?

Hermione paused and shook her head, sending her hair flying around her shoulders. No, not possible. Maybe if she'd been the one with her hand between her thighs, that would have been plausible, but Malfoy watching her would have had to mean Malfoy being attracted to _her_, not the other way around. "And that's just ridiculous," she told herself, trying to pretend that her voice hadn't lilted and shifted her statement to a question. "Crazy. Utterly mad. He's clearly _not_."

She turned a corner, moved down another aisle, trailed her hands over more books. "And I'm clearly not," she told herself. "Not attracted to Malfoy. Not possible. I have a boyfriend."

A boyfriend who'd accused her of flirting with another man.

"I love Ron."

They hadn't said 'I love you' to each other in months.

"Not _Malfoy_."

Not his rare, boyish smile. Not his long, narrow feet. Not his thin-fingered, bony-knuckled hands. Not the high cheekbones, not the soft fringe across his forehead. Not the pale grey eyes that shifted to storm dark when his emotions ran high. Not the low, full tone of his voice when he spoke, unguarded and relaxed. Not the scar across his chest or the Mark embedded in his arm, the evidence of mistakes he clearly regretted.

Hermione bit her lip on a groan. Even when trying to think of evidence for not being interested, to prove Ron and Molly and anyone else _wrong_, all she could come up with was reasons to take _more_ interest. Malfoy intrigued her, Malfoy attracted her, and what she'd said to Molly had been a lie.

She stopped in a darkened aisle, gripped the closest shelf and bent her neck to rest her forehead against the books. Her concern for Malfoy had nothing to do with his usefulness to her case, her project. Except for a few fleeting moments, she'd hardly thought about the murdered and missing Death Eaters at all in the previous two days. She'd only thought about one Death Eater.

She was failing at her duty, she was failing her friends, she was failing her lover and the family she adored, and Hermione whimpered, stomping her feet and thumping her head on the shelf. "No," she told herself, "No. Concentrate. Forget him. Stay uninvolved, stay focused."

"Giffin says get your arse to the office. Now."

Hermione snapped her head up and stared at the long-legged, silvery zebra that had appeared in the aisle beside her. Zabini's Patronus. Having delivered its message, it faded and disappeared, and a cobra with a flared hood coalesced in its place. The exact same message, in Patil's voice, emerged from between cloudy fangs, and the cobra disappeared to be replaced by a boar, which managed to color its identical message with Macmillan's haughty tone.

Either something horrible had happened regarding the case, or she was in quite a lot of trouble on a personal level. Hermione wrung her hands, trying to decide which was worse, then took a deep breath and Apparated to the Ministry.

***

Zabini, Patil, and Macmillan, gathered in her office with parchments and files clutched on their laps, all avoided her eyes. Giffin sat behind her desk, his hands locked together over his paunch. He stared at her without speaking, her team stared assiduously at their collective shoes, and Hermione felt something deep in her gut start to quiver. "Harvath, I can ex--"

"Sit down." He didn't raise his voice, didn't shout or snap, but Hermione dropped into the lone empty chair next to Zabini, her throat closing tight with a sick tension. "Blaise, give your report."

Zabini glanced sideways at Hermione, then got to his feet and cleared his throat. "We've located two of the escaped Death Eaters. Unfortunately, um." He shifted on his feet, took a step away from Hermione. "Unfortunately not fast enough. Got a report yesterday that a house in Lincolnshire burned to the ground last week. Turns out it was owned by a sixth cousin of Mulciber's. We found two bodies, and we're assuming one was his. And...." Zabini bowed his head for a moment and Hermione looked up to see a muscle in his jaw working, his eyes shut tight. "Theodore Nott was supposedly on holiday in Northumberland. His employer and his landlady contacted us when he didn't return home and to work as scheduled. We ran a search and located him and-and his father." Zabini swallowed, raising his head. "What was left of them."

Giffin made a sharp gesture, and Zabini sat, scooting his chair a few inches further from Hermione's. Macmillan stood, his eyes focused straight ahead. "Information gathered from the inmates at Azkaban suggests that on the night of the riots, the Dementors displayed unusual aggression and activity. Several inmates reported _excessive_ screaming from the Death Eaters located in the north wing. The prisoner incarcerated in the cell nearest to Travers informed me that Travers, that night, spent several minutes staring at his arm with a--" He held up a parchment, peering at it closely, then lifted his head and read from it. "Begin quote, looked like he'd seen the de'il hisself rise up off his skin, guv, end quote. Travers then proceeded to close his eyes, place his arm against his mouth, and bite through his own wrist." Patil made a gagging sound, and Hermione flinched. Macmillan sighed and continued. "Crabbe and Rowle, the others who died that night, apparently also committed suicide." He cleared his throat to speak more, but Giffin made another gesture and Macmillan shut his mouth, reclaiming his seat and staring at the wall.

Patil stood up, and Hermione caught just the edge of an apologetic glance before the other witch started on her report. "We've studied the note received from Malfoy, and unfortunately, there's very little to go on, regarding it. Faint traces of asphodel on the parchment itself, corroborating Malfoy's statement regarding the owl that delivered it. Handwriting is unknown, parchment is generic and available for purchase at any stationery shop, no indication of anything unusual about the quill or ink used for the note." Giffin stated to speak and Patil raised a hand. "That's everything I was able to find out. Marlene and Aggie, on the other hand...." Patil flicked a look at Hermione, then shrugged sheepishly. "Aggie took the note home and slept on it. Literally. I know, I know, we're not supposed to be using divination, but ... but she said she saw a thin figure, a bird, the color red, and old blood."

Hermione snorted, unable to help herself, then cringed into her robes when Giffin threw a sharp look at her. "You have a problem, Miss Granger?"

"Sir, divination?" Hermione sat up, straightening her shoulders. "That could mean just about anything. I really believe that we need to concentrate on the facts of the case, not on dreams and tea leaves."

Giffin looked at her for a long moment, long enough that the rest of her team all coughed and shifted nervously in their chairs. "I see three people here who _have_ been concentrating on the facts of the case, Miss Granger. Care to present your findings? Show us the work you've been doing these past couple of weeks?"

Hermione froze, her mouth hanging open. Her mind raced. What could she say? Narcissa Malfoy had been murdered - they knew that, MLE had investigated and confirmed a death consistent with known Death Eater methods. The Dark Marks had altered - they knew that too, she'd written a report on what Narcissa had told her and given it to Giffin the day after the funeral. Everything that she had - the owl, the note, the previous victims - all of it was information they already knew. She had nothing new, nothing fresh, and even with as much time as she'd spent with Malfoy recently, she hadn't asked him anything that could help with the case. She'd given _him_ information, not the reverse, and she slowly shut her mouth and sat back in her chair. "Nothing, Sir," she murmured, ashamed of her failure. "Nothing n--_wait_!"

She sat bolt upright, her chin snapping up. "This morning, I was at Malfoy's. He-he-he, I witnessed him, there was a, someone, something...." She shook her head, growling at herself for stumbling over her words, and leaned forward in her chair. "The Mark. Malfoy's Mark. It burned, someone was calling him. Whoever's re-activated the Marks, whoever's made them all re-appear on the Death Eaters, that person called Malfoy. I Stunned him so he couldn't respond, not that he would have wanted to anyway, but Sir!" She leapt up from her chair, grinning wildly, sure that she had it. "We can put everyone on alert, ready them for action. If whoever it was called the Death Eaters today, then we'll probably have another attack tonight!"

Giffin gave her a steady look, then sucked on his teeth and exhaled slowly. "You Stunned him. Prevented him from responding to the person who could be our murderer. Stopped him from going." Hermione's grin faded as Giffin continued, and she looked away from her team, none of whom were looking at her. When the vein in Giffin's temple throbbed - and it was bouncing like a Morris dancer right that moment - the best option was to pray you weren't the one who'd caused it. "All of this happened _this morning_ and you didn't report in?" Giffin stood up, leaning on the desk and glaring at her. "Did you think, possibly, that you could have slapped a tracking charm on him and let him go? That you could have contacted us and had him followed? That maybe, just maybe, we might have been able to use him to find our killer and prevent someone else from dying? Isn't that the point, Miss Granger? Stop them from being killed? I could have sworn that was the reason behind this entire investigation, but maybe I was mistaken, and the actual reason for it all was to have tea parties at Malfoy's house."

Hermione wrung her hands, twisting her fingers together, and bowed her head. Molly's voice echoed in her head - _Maybe you were thinking to set him up as bait, lure this murderer out._ \- and was joined by Giffin's - _you could have contacted us and had him followed_ \- and all she could think was that if the situation happened again, she'd do exactly the same as she had before. She'd protect Malfoy before she'd risk losing him. The realization made her voice tight as she spoke. "Sir, I ... I don't know what to say. I'm sorry, I messed up."

Giffin snorted and shoved a parchment across her desk to flutter onto the floor by her feet. "Yeah, you did. Because we've got another body."


	8. Chapter 8

  
**EIGHT**

Alive.

His father was alive.

As much as it had hurt him, as much as he'd known the inhibitor band on his throat would choke and pain him, he'd shoved his way into Granger's mind and seen the truth there. Seen the truth that in five years - long, lonely, and locked-up years - no one had bothered to tell him. Everyone had hidden from him. The truth that everyone had made a lie.

His father was _alive_.

Draco lay on the floor of his study, one arm wrapped around the leg of his desk, his cheek pressed into the thick pile of the antique carpet. He blinked, slowly, waiting for his stomach to settle and the world to stop spinning.

It was possible, he decided, that it never would. The entire month had been a series of changes that he was completely uncertain he could handle. His Mark had returned, his mother had died, he'd had some rather confusing thoughts about one Hermione Granger, and all of that had been enough to stagger him to the point where if he hadn't already been drinking heavily, he'd have taken it up. But this?

_This_.

The man he'd worshipped for most of his life, the man he'd emulated since he was old enough to hold his own head up, the man around whose pride and approval he'd organized his entire life - that man was still alive. His father.

Still.

Alive.

As much as he'd hated the idea that Lucius had died in the North Sea, that he'd never see his father again, at least he'd had years to accustom himself to the concept, and at least it was something definite, something certain. But this?

Draco groaned and rolled to one side with some effort, his muscles twitching and trembling, to lay against his desk. It had taken him hours to recover from using a fire charm for Winifred's pyre, and that had been mostly simple conjuration of oil and flames. Legilimency was a far different cry, took much more concentration and will, and Draco was finding it difficult not to throw up. Breathing was complicated enough with the tight and aching pain in his throat, and moving was almost too much. He wasn't sure how long it would take him to recover this time, and wasn't sure it had been worth it at all.

Draco exhaled slowly and turned his head to lay his other cheek on the carpet. He wanted to deny it. Wanted to deny any possibility that it was true, but he'd been in Granger's mind. Legilimency wasn't his strength, and fear of the inhibitor band had stopped him from going deep, but he'd gone deep enough. Either Granger was a truly convincing liar - and the odds of that were smaller than his future firstborn becoming a Hufflepuff - or what she believed was true. Lucius Malfoy was alive.

  
He lay still, concentrating on no more taxing activity than each slow inhale and exhale, and thought over everything he'd taken from Granger's mind. His father's face stood out the most, a pale and pointed mirror of his own. The eyes were a slightly darker shade of grey, the chin and nose were slightly more pronounced. Lucius' blond hair had streaks of an even paler shade, silver mixing into the gold. Deep lines bracketed his mouth and feathered out from his eyes, and Draco tried to determine when Lucius had started to look so _old_. The last time he'd seen his father, at Lucius' trial, there hadn't been that many lines, hadn't been the evidence of nearly as much worry and concern.

Draco laughed silently. He'd earned several similar lines himself over the previous few years - should he really be surprised at Lucius' physical appearance?

He took a deep breath and focused, looking over more of the memory he'd taken from Granger, examining the thoughts he'd seen in her mind. He seemed to hear a soft, distant voice, saying over and over, "No. No. He can't know," and Draco's brows furrowed with concentration. It sounded like Lucius, like his father was speaking, and with fear in his words.

Draco shut his eyes to eliminate any distractions. In his thoughts - in Granger's thoughts - Lucius leaned back in a chair, hands clenched on the arms of it. He sat near a fireplace with a curved mantle and hearth. The fireplace was curved because the wall was curved, and Draco held his breath while he stared at the scene, while he tried to figure out why the setting looked familiar. Curved walls, a round room....

His eyes snapped open and he sat up, his body shrieking with the movement, his head aching and swirling. The round room, the round _cottage_. Years before, the family had gone on holiday, and they'd visited a small village in Cornwall, an old village with several round cottages. "They don't have any corners," Lucius had said in answer to Draco's bewildered questions, "so the devil can't get in and hide."

Cornwall.

Veryan.

_Dad_.

***

He stood in front of the drawing room door, both hands pressed to the wood to let him keep his balance. Maddy had helped him up and out of the study, helped him to clean up after that exertion made him ill, and helped him back downstairs to the door, grumbling with worry the entire time, her ears twisted in her hands. She'd been reluctant to assist him further, but after his stubborn declaration, made from his knees while he clutched at the bathroom sink, that he'd do it himself regardless, she'd given in.

She stood beside him, a long, silver-bladed dagger in her hands. She trembled to the point where Draco could hear her sari rustling, but she stayed, watching and waiting. Draco knew this was going to hurt. Knew it was going to be excruciating pain and he'd probably pass out, but he'd spread several cushions on the floor just in case. He took a deep breath and dragged his hands down the door, murmuring under his breath.

The shimmering spell gave off a sparkle, flickered and brightened in the trail of his fingers. The band around his neck chilled, the metal tightening against his throat. Draco swallowed hard, his Adam's apple scraping under the band, and he reached out to Maddy.

"Master?" He looked down to see her regarding him with a deep concern in her wide eyes. The tip of the dagger quivered and she took a long breath, firming her grip on the hilt. "Is Master sure?"

He patted her head, giving a small, quavering smile. "I need to do this, Maddy." She flinched at the tight sound of his voice, but held up the dagger. Draco took it from her, breathing as deeply as he could with the inhibitor band pressing against his throat, then brought the knife up.

Closing his eyes, he chanted, low and soft, murmuring the words to a spell designed to seal or reveal any room in the Manor to members of the family, and them alone. He placed the point of the blade against the base of his left ring finger, pressed it into the pad of flesh until it dented his skin, then hesitated.

Breathed.

And sliced the dagger across his palm.

His eyes snapped open, widening as he hissed in pain, and blood welled in his hand. Maddy keened beside him, gripping at his robes and clinging to his knee. Draco dropped the dagger and slapped his palm against the door. His blood - old blood, pure blood, the blood of one of the most ancient lineages still known to wizardkind - smeared across the carved panels. The spell on the door shook and fractured, with small, bead-like puffs of smoke floating out of the grain of the wood. The band on his throat chilled to the point where it burned, feeling as though it was blistering his skin, flaring into a light so intense he saw flashes and spots when he shut his eyes. Heat ran along his spine and grounded in his skull, spread down his sides to his hips, spiked up his ribs and down his thighs. Along with the heat came a piercing, searing pain, every nerve awake and responding, every inch of his body tingling and quaking.

Draco's keen joined with Maddy's, his face twisted in a violent grimace, and he fell against the door. Maddy gripped his robes and shook the fabric frantically. "Master must finish!"

Through a red fog, he heard her voice, muted and soft under his moan of pain. He forced his eyes open and levered himself off the door to drag his palm across the panels. His fingers trailed over the carvings, outlining figures and shapes, and he traced a design on the wood, spread his blood over the door. As the red stain covered more, he spoke, choking each word out through gritted teeth.

It had taken him weeks of slow, gradual work to place the spell originally, a process intended to put as little stress and strain on him as possible, intended to keep the inhibitor band from recognizing not only the presence of magic, but ancient magic, blood magic. Now he was breaking the spell, removing it all in one go, and he was paying for it. Each drop of blood he smeared on the door burned his skin, each word he said to reverse the spell stung his throat, and every breath seared his lungs. The inhibitor band tightened on his neck, and Draco drew the last symbol on the door and spoke the last word with the last of his air. The spell on the door shattered, the shimmer of it dissipated in a great roll of red-tinted smoke, and Draco collapsed.

***

He woke slowly, the haze of unconsciousness rolling away from him. He choked and coughed, his mouth dry, and he licked his lips to moisten them, tasting blood and bile on his skin. A figure shifted next to him at his movements, and he twitched his eyes toward it. Maddy crouched nearby, with her legs folded up to her chest and her chin on her knees, her long fingers tucked under her toes and her ears flattened against her skull, putting her into the smallest huddle he'd ever seen from her. "Maddy fixed Master's hand and cleaned the corridor," she informed him, tears welling in her eyes as she looked at him. "After she brought Master in and let him sleep, of course." She added that hurriedly, as if to reassure him that blood all over her carpets had been the least of her concerns, and Draco managed a small, tentative smile. He'd been out for hours, he could tell from his stiff muscles and aching head, and he asked Maddy the time. She told him it was well after midnight, and he nodded, unsurprised. Blood magic took a lot out of a wizard regardless. Blood magic combined with a punishing curse could only do worse.

She'd put him on a long sofa, and Draco sat up carefully, pulling himself up with a tight grip on the back. He _had_ bled on the carpet, and he could see a dark stain on the fibers. It pooled in the middle of an even darker stain, and Draco looked away from it quickly, a scream echoing in his memory. The bloodstain was Granger's, left after Bella's torture so long ago. Draco remembered it too clearly, had been unable to forget it despite the years that had passed. Granger, writhing and screaming on the floor, her hair spread across her face, her limbs stretched and straining.

He'd watched.

He'd forced himself to watch, to drive it into his mind, so the image of her supposed dirty, tainted blood would never leave him. That had been the beginnings of the changes in his beliefs, the start of the alteration of so much of his thinking. Everything that he'd trusted in so blindly had cracked that day, and the years since had broken it all, everything his father had taught him.

His father.

Draco groaned and swung his feet off the sofa, and Maddy jumped up, her hands fluttering in front of her face. "Master shouldn't have _done_ this, Master shouldn't have risked himself, and Maddy doesn't know why she helped because she doesn't know why Master wanted in here in the first place because he closed this room up for a reason and Maddy is so _confused_ and Master is bleeding again!"

Draco stared blankly through Maddy's rapid, babbling speech, then glanced down at his hand as she grabbed it and flailed at the bandage he hadn't noticed before. Maddy must have put it on him while he was out, cared for his self-inflicted injury. At least, he told himself with a silent laugh as Maddy grumbled over his hand and a broken scab, if he got a scar from this, it would be his own damn fault for once.

He looked over Maddy's head at the reason he'd opened the room. In the center of the far wall was a large fireplace, the mantle done in ornately carved marble. It was tall enough to stand inside, built like almost all Floos, but with a little additional magic crucial to any wizard who didn't want his whereabouts known - and his family had a long history of that. The Dark Lord had examined the spells on the fireplace, strengthened them, added his own touches and magics, and it was close to impossible for anyone to breach the secrecy and security that had been placed on it.

Not entirely impossible. Draco had no illusions as to that - plenty of people had thought it impossible for the Dark Lord to die, and that had been proven wrong - but enough that he trusted no one would be able to find him once he left. He gathered himself, bracing for the effort of getting to his feet. He kept his eyes focused on the fireplace, waving Maddy off when she tried to help him up. "Get the Floo powder," he told her. "I'll need you to do that part, or this damned necklace will stop me from getting there."

Maddy wrung her ear, but moved to the hearth and grabbed a handful of the powder. "Where is Master going?"

Cornwall.

Veryan.

"Nowhere."

Draco looked over his shoulder, startled by the familiar and unwelcome voice. "Granger. Pardon my language, but what the fuck are you doing here?"

Granger stomped into the room, stopping with the toes of her shoes just an inch from the dark stain in the carpet. She crossed her arms and stared at him, her eyes narrowed and her lips in a thin line. "Another body, Malfoy. Another Death Eater murdered. Could have stopped it if I hadn't stopped you from answering that call this morning. Did you know about it? Get any owls recently?"

He blinked at her, then laughed as he pushed to his feet. "Yeah, actually. Forgot all about that. It's Jugson, if you haven't figured it out yet. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm about to leave. Show yourself out."

"You _can't_ leave."

Her voice held a small amount of smug triumph and Draco rolled his eyes as he let go of the sofa and took a shaking step towards the Floo. "No, I don't have _permission_ to leave. I've left the grounds several times in the past few years, Granger, I just never went very far. Never had a good reason to go anywhere." He looked at her eyes, pleased that she turned her head as if afraid he'd try to drive into her mind again. "Now I do."

Granger took a long step around the bloodstains on the floor and rushed to the fireplace before he could reach it. She stood in front of it and pushed Maddy away, shoving the house-elf to the side to cower and watch them. "Malfoy, you're not going anywhere. Especially not ... not where I suspect you're going."

Draco reached the fireplace and leaned on the mantle beside her, one hand pressed to his chest over the old scar, his breathing rough with exertion. "If you suspect I'm going to Cornwall, then you _are_ a clever witch. Get out of my way."

She stretched her arms across the fireplace and widened her stance to cover as much of the opening as she could. "You're _not_ going, Malfoy. You _can't_. We kept you separated for a reason."

Before she could say another word, Draco growled and snapped his hand up, locking his fingers in her hair and moving in close to her. "Reason? You had a _reason_? You had a reason to break up my family, to convince us that my father was _dead_?" He leaned in, pressing her into the mantle with the weight of his body, sliding his free arm around her waist in a harsh embrace. "Gave my mother a stroke, left us alone for _years_, what was your fucking reason for that?"

She glared up at him, her face twisted and her eyes shining, and Draco realized with a stifled gasp of shock that it was tears and not anger that moistened her eyes. "He asked us to!"

***

Lucius Malfoy. One of the Dark Lord's trusted and longest-serving lieutenants. One of the staunchest pure-blood supporters in England. A man Draco respected, worshipped, and loved. And he'd abandoned his family. Voluntarily.

Draco sat on the sofa, elbows on his knees, his hands locked around a glass of brandy. Granger sat beside him, fidgeting with her robes and giving remorseful looks to Maddy. Draco'd ignored Granger's long, horrified apology - "I didn't mean to shove you!" - to the house-elf in favor of letting his world collapse.

He couldn't understand why his father would have done it, why Lucius would leave them, why he would avoid them for so long. Draco leaned back in the sofa and took a long drink as he stared at the ceiling. "Granger," he said, his voice hoarse around the burn of the brandy. "Why?"

She sighed and leaned back beside him, toying with her necklace. "He couldn't change, Malfoy." Draco tipped his head to stare at her and she shrugged. "Remember, you told me how much you'd been thinking about differences between pure-bloods and other wizards, and how you'd figured out there weren't that many differences, and everything your father told you was wrong and-and-and all that?" She pulled her feet up into the sofa and turned to face him. "You changed. He didn't. He _can't_. Even through all the negotiations and planning that went into hiding him, even during that, when we were doing him a _favor_, he couldn't help himself. He'd call Arthur 'Mister Blood-traitor', call me 'Miss Mud-blood'. He knew the war was lost, he knew things were going to change, and he couldn't. But he knew you could. He saw what the Death Eaters did to you, saw you getting disillusioned."

She put her hand on his knee, patting it unconsciously as she leaned closer. "Malfoy, he knew he wouldn't be able to adapt to a post-war society, but he wanted you to. He wanted you to have a chance. He asked us to.... He testified against _everyone_. He gave us more information than we could possibly get on our own. He told us so much, and his one condition was that we hide him. Hide him from retribution and hide him from temptation."

"Temptation." Draco shut his eyes and shook his head, lost far enough in his confusion that the heat of Granger's hand on his knee was comforting rather than bewildering. "What temptation?"

"To keep teaching you everything he knew. _All_ he knew was hate. He wanted you to learn something else. Something to make your future better." When she looked at him, all her anger had drained from her eyes. "He was protecting you, Draco. He was _giving_ you what he could by taking away what he could. He left for you."

Draco watched her for a long moment, then set his brandy on a side table and took her hand. "Granger." He patted her fingers and gave her a tight smile. "That is, quite possibly, the worst load of rubbish I've ever heard. Nice try, though."

He dove off the sofa and into the fireplace, grabbed a handful of powder, and shouted "Veryan!" as he dropped it. The band on his throat tightened, and Granger leapt off the sofa, tackling him. The green flames shot up and they both disappeared.

***

They fell out of a fireplace onto a wood floor, wrapped around each other in a tangle of robes. He landed on the bottom, on his back, his head thumping on the floor as Granger landed on his chest. Draco groaned, instinctively tensing his body in anticipation of the punishment for magic use from his inhibitor band. It came, but not as strong as he expected, not as powerful as he feared. The heat and pain came, seared along his body, but it was muted.

Granger shuddered in his arms, her hair falling across his neck and shoulders, and she made a soft, whimpering noise of pain. Another flare of heat ran down his spine and Granger shuddered again. The contact between their bodies allowed the disciplinary spell to hit both of them, and Draco grunted when he realized it. He held her closer, lifting his head to whisper into her hair. "Just hold on," he mumbled, gritting his teeth against another shock. "Hold on. It'll be over in a minute. We didn't use much magic, it won't last long. Hold on, it's almost over."

When the band's curse faded, Granger shook again, but this time the sound she made was close to a laugh. "Hope you don't say that to every woman on top of you."

Draco snorted and pushed her hair off her face, grateful she could make a joke. She wasn't hurt, then. "No, just the pret--the annoying ones. You all right?" He hoped she was distracted enough from residual pain and his blatant defiance of his house arrest restrictions to have not noticed his verbal slip, and blamed the pain for it on his part. Not the scent of her hair, not the feel of her in his arms, and definitely, certainly, not the way one of her thighs had slipped between his. "Come on, Granger, get up." _Please_, he said silently, _or when I get home, I'll be having another go and I definitely won't be convinced I'm dreaming this time._

She rolled off him and sat up, staring at his neck and rubbing the chain of her necklace. "Is _that_ what that does? Does it hurt that bad every time?"

Draco sat up and shoved his hair out of his eyes. "No," he told her after a few moments of staring into the Floo they'd fallen from. "No, it usually hurts a lot more than that. It's all right, I'm used to it." He stood and looked down at her, confused by the horrified look on her face. "What?"

"_Malfoy_!" She jumped up, dusting off her robes. "That's ... that's _cruel_! You've been wearing that thing for years! You've been getting cursed like that for years! How could the Ministry do that to you?"

Draco stared at her in surprise, then sighed and shook his head. "I'm a criminal, Granger. That's how. It was prison or this. Not much of a choice, but I'm a Death Eater. I took what I could get." Before her eyes could soften, before he could see pity or understanding in her face, he turned to look at the room they were in. Square walls, corners. "Wrong house, _fuck_."

"This is a bad idea and I tried to stop you. I just want that to be very clear so I have a decent defense when they fire me." She pushed past him and headed for the door. "There's only one Floo in this village and you're insane if you think we put it in your father's house. Poor job at protecting him, wouldn't that be?"

Draco followed her outside and ran straight into her back when she froze. The village was lit for night, every cottage spilling warm golden light out of windows and around shutters - except for one. Over one cottage, one round cottage, a pall of darkness hovered, sinking to engulf the building in twisted, tattered murk. At the edge of the shadows, in the weak light from the buildings nearby, light that struggled limply to burn through the dark, a cloaked and hooded figure moved, one arm lifting to point a wand at the cottage's door. It opened, and the figure stepped inside, shutting the door silently.


	9. Chapter 9

**NINE**

The hooded figure. The long cloak, the hovering darkness. Hermione looked up at the sky with horror, expecting to see that laughing emerald skull. Behind her, Malfoy was trembling, his hands locked in her robes. "Granger," he muttered, "Granger, tell me I've gone blind, tell me I'm dreaming, tell me I did _not_ just see a Death Eater going into my father's house." His voice was taut and terrified, and she spun around, plucking at his robes, patting his chest, cupping his cheeks in frantic, repetitive motions, desperate to calm him, to get that look of sickened fear out of his eyes.

"Malfoy," she whispered, clutching his cheeks and smoothing her fingers back into his hair. "Draco. No. No, it's ... it can't be. No one knows where he is except the people who moved him here and none of us are Death Eaters. There's some other explanation, there has to be."

Malfoy groaned and she tightened her fingers in his hair, ready to grab him if he started to run, but he hissed and grimaced and pawed at his arm. She looked down as she shoved up his sleeve, gasped at the same time he did. The Mark. It moved and writhed, and Hermione looked up again to see pain crossing Malfoy's face. He curled his spine and bowed his head to her shoulder, sucking in air with a deep gulp.

Behind them came a series of soft noises, the quiet pops of air displacement, and a few hushed voices with tones of confusion reached them. Hermione stepped into Malfoy's arms and turned to put her back to him, to put him behind her in an unconscious bid to guard him, and she gaped at the men standing a few yards away, grouped at the edge of the shadow. One moved forward, light from a nearby cottage falling across his face. "Macnair," she heard Malfoy whisper, and he moved closer to her, his hands falling on her waist and holding tight.

"Malfoy?" Macnair stepped forward again, and the men behind him gathered closer, forming up in flanks on either side. "Lucius?" A few more steps, and Macnair's face twisted in disappointed recognition. "Draco. Thought you were your father. You look just like him."

Malfoy made a quiet sound and dug his fingers into her robes. "I know."

"So you finally got the bollocks to respond to a call, did you?" Macnair tipped his head, looking at Hermione. "And you brought us a present. How nice. Your dad'll be happy to see that you decided to join up with us. He was so disappointed when you didn't come to play with Jugson."

She sensed Malfoy shaking his head behind her, felt his fingers clamp on her hips. He pulled her back, tugged her against his body. "He wouldn't. He _didn't_. He's-he's-he's dead. Has been for years, everyone knows that. Drowned in the North Sea years ago." Hermione nodded, imperceptibly, appreciating Malfoy's attempt at carrying through on the lie the Ministry had implemented, even if she suspected it was not going to do them much good. If he could keep Macnair distracted, if he could just talk to the men and get them away from her, she could contact her team, get some assistance, and nobody would have to die that night.

Macnair shook his head and slid up his sleeve, pointing to the Mark on his forearm. He tapped the snake's markings, the spot where Narcissa had told her the Mark had changed. "M. For Malfoy. He did."

Hermione stiffened and gasped, as if stung, and Macnair stared at her as if he'd never seen her before. She ignored him, turning to Malfoy with her hands fluttering at his chest. The riots, the escapes, the killings. Revenge, murder. Narcissa's scream before her death. The change in the Mark. It all made sense, it was all logical. Lucius had been using them all along. She remembered Aggie's divination, the dream that she'd ignored as foolishness. The old blood, in the Malfoy line. The bird, their peacocks. It sounded _right_. She had to contact the Ministry, she had to get help. She flailed at Malfoy's chest and he caught her wrists. "No," he murmured, his voice lilting in denial. "_No_."

"No, actually." A grumbling, distorted voice echoed around them, rolling out of the thin shadows that had engulfed the cottage. She and Malfoy, Macnair and the other men all spun and stared into the darkness. "Nice guess, gentlemen, but no. He's right here."

A cry of pain followed and a shape stumbled out of the shadows, falling into the middle of their bewildered gathering. A thin figure in overlarge robes. Pale blond hair spread across the ground. Hermione caught her breath at the sight, the horribly familiar sight. Malfoy moaned and shoved her aside, rushing forward to drop to his knees beside the still, unmoving figure. "Dad. Dad, oh my god, _Dad_."

A deep, twisted laugh rolled out of the darkness and the voice shouted. "_Avada Kedavra_!" A bolt of green light burst from the shadows towards Malfoy, and Hermione screamed. Malfoy threw himself down, covering his father, and the curse struck Macnair square in the chest. Everything froze, the world seemed to hold its breath, then Macnair fell, another curse flew from the darkness, and the Death Eaters drew wands and scattered.

***

Hermione dove towards Malfoy, drawing her wand from the sheath on her arm. It was instinctive, automatic, and she wouldn't have been able to stop herself if she'd tried. She could possibly convince herself that she'd done it because Malfoy was wandless, wearing that inhibitor band, and unable to protect himself, but in the flash of seconds before she landed beside him and scanned the shadows, she knew she'd done it because it was Malfoy. Because it was _Draco_, Draco lying beside her, murmuring with broken, apologetic tones into his father's hair.

The Death Eaters were frenzied, throwing spells wildly, screaming commands at each other, shouting at the darkness that surrounded the cottage. Malfoy raised up as the deep, distorted voice came from the shadows, and another green bolt flew overhead. Hermione ducked, slammed Malfoy down to his back, and closed her eyes as a man's scream cut off before it could truly begin.

She raised her head off Malfoy's shoulder, only an inch, just enough to see, and edged her arm across his stomach, getting her wand into position. Under cover of shouts and spells from the Death Eaters, she called up her Patronus. The silvery otter formed low to the ground, watching her. "Harvath, Harry, anyone in MLE. Help us!"

The otter tilted its head, nodded once, and turned in mid-air to move around the edges of the shadows. It broke into a run just as a spell hit the ground before it, and the otter ran nose-first into a shimmering shield, dissipating into the air and making Hermione moan in disbelief. The hooded figure stepped out of the murk and Hermione stilled as it spoke. "An otter. Oh, honestly." It raised its head and the smallest glimmer of light flashed off a mask.

A familiar mask.

Hermione stifled a gasp when she recognized one of the joke shop products Ron kept in their flat, one of the Magical Voice-Changing Masks. Under her breath, almost inaudible, came a steady stream of "No, no, no, no", repeated like a prayer, as a thin hand reached up and pushed the mask and hood away, exposing a slim face surrounded by a mane of red hair. Hermione held her breath, her heat stuttering to a stop.

"Hermione, that was your Patronus, so I know you're out here. Hope you brought the littlest Death Eater with you. It'll save me a trip to Wiltshire. I don't like being away from James that long." Without the distortion of the mask, Ginny's voice was clear, carrying over the shouts of the Death Eaters as they regrouped in the shadows.

Hermione stared in horror, trembling with shock. Beside her, Malfoy stirred, his hand sliding over her wrist and squeezing gently. She took a deep, shuddering breath and bowed her head against his shoulder. She felt him move, felt a sharp chin and soft lips press into her hair, and she stifled a sob. "Ginny," she said, her voice thick with fear and confusion. "Ginny, what are you doing? How _could_ you?"

"How _couldn't_ I?" Ginny asked, turning her head slightly, triangulating on Hermione's voice. "They're Death Eaters. They're torturers and murderers. They need to be wiped from the earth, every last one of them needs to die." Her face twisted, a grimace of hate crossing it. "And every single time I had a chance before, _every_ time, something stopped me. The Department of Mysteries, the first battle at school. Taken out, both times, before I could do anything to get my revenge. The final battle, my last chance, and my own _mother_ stopped me, killed that bitch before I could."

She took a step forward, one hand raised palm-up, her fingers clenching on thin air. "Ever since that bastard took me over with his diary, I've been waiting for a chance to get some vengeance on him and all his bloody servants, and I am _tired_ of waiting. It took me years, _years_, Hermione, to figure out the spell he used to activate their Marks, to call them to his side, and finally I did it. One death at a time, one Death Eater eliminated at a time, and I finally figured out the trick. I made them mine, all of them, and now no one can stop me, and I'm going to kill the last of them. It ends tonight." She snapped her head up at the sound of a footfall, spun around and aimed her wand as a dark shape rushed out of the shadows. She shouted, a curse flew, and another Death Eater fell. "One more down," Ginny said with glee, dancing on the spot. "One less to worry about."

Underneath her, Malfoy was trembling, though with fear or anger she couldn't tell, and she shifted, sliding her hand up to touch his cheek. "Don't," she whispered. "Whatever you're thinking, don't. We'll get out of this."

"Give me your wand," he murmured, his voice taut through clenched teeth. "We need to move. Give me your wand." Hermione shook her head and he tightened his grip on her wrist. "There's a spell so we can move in silence, but I have to cast it. Give me the fucking wand."

She hesitated, and overhead another green bolt flew, Ginny's laugh rising over the shouts of the terrified men in the shadows. Hermione gulped down a sob and handed her wand to Malfoy. He shifted under her, moving to pull her fully into an embrace, his head burrowed against her neck. "This is going to hurt like hell, just so you know. _Dissimulo Mutus_."

Hermione's spine tingled and a sharp pain sped through her, bowing her back and setting her limbs to quaking. Malfoy tightened his grip on her, held her firm, even as a soft, keening sound came from him. Hermione bit her lip to stop herself from making the same noise as the close contact between them spread the pain from his inhibitor band to them both. Malfoy's whimper grew, started to become a cry of pain, and Hermione moved, fastened her lips on his and caught the sound in her mouth.

The roiling pain of the punishing hex ended quickly, but Hermione took a few extra seconds to keep her lips over Malfoy's, to turn her action from a preventative measure to a kiss. She kissed him, and Malfoy's hands tensed and gripped at her robes. For just a moment, he relaxed under her, and she felt a small shift, a tiny movement of his mouth. He kissed her back, then turned his head, broke the contact of their lips, and whispered into her hair. "We'll have to talk about that later. Let's move."

She nodded, her mind swirling, and slowly edged off him. Malfoy's spell silenced her movements, even silenced the rustle of her robes, and she looked at him, her eyes widened. "Death Eater," he said, in a normal tone of voice, and she flinched, shushing him. He rolled his eyes and shifted, moving away from his father's still form. "Don't panic. She can't hear us or see us. We'll look like shadows to her. It's a spell some of the Death Eaters learned off the Dark Lord. How do you think we--_they_ did so many attacks without alerting the neighbors before it was too late? It doesn't last long, though, so we've got to move." He looked across the ground towards Ginny, dueling two men and laughing the whole time. "Perfect. Let's go."

Hermione clutched at his robes as he eased to his feet. "What about your father? What about Ginny?"

Malfoy stilled, his head bowing, then he looked back to her with flat, emotionless eyes. "I can't do anything for him right now. And your crazy friend is on her own. Hopefully someone'll kill her quick enough for us to get away."

"Malfoy!"

He looked at her for a moment, one eyebrow raised, then turned his head and moved into the shadows, heading for his father's cottage.

***

By the time they got inside the cottage and sealed up the windows and doors, Hermione was trembling, quaking so hard she could barely keep a grip on her wand. Ginny had been too involved in killing the men she'd been dueling to notice their silent, spell-assisted crawling, but still Hermione had been afraid they'd be spotted before they could make it inside. She leaned against the door, her head pressed to the wood and her shoulders shaking. "How could she?" she murmured, fingers scraping at the door. "How could she do this?"

"You heard her. Revenge." Glass clinked and Hermione looked over her shoulder to see Malfoy going through cabinets. He pulled a cut-crystal bottle out of one with a crow of triumph, snatched off the stopper, and drank deep. "Dad always did know his brandy," he said, his voice hoarse, and he saluted himself in a tall, cracked mirror hanging beside an archway leading deeper into the house.

"Do you really think it's a good time to get drunk right now, Malfoy?" Her heart wasn't in the scolding, though, aching as it did, and she turned back to the door. On the other side, the men, the Death Eaters, were shouting less and screaming more, but those screams were lessening, one by one. Hermione took a deep breath, shuddering when another scream was cut off and Ginny's laugh rose up and pierced through the door.

She put her back to it and slid down, tucking her hands into her hair. She'd been wrong. Aggie had got the divination right, and she'd got it wrong. Old blood - the Weasleys were pure for generations. The color red - the first thing anyone noticed about the entire family, that hair. A bird - those _chickens_, back in school, when Ginny had been possessed by--

"That _diary_!" she shouted, startling Malfoy into dropping the bottle with a curse. "The diary," she said, leaning forward. "The one your father slipped to her years ago, the Horcrux. It had a piece of Voldemort's soul in it, and it took over Ginny, and she said, she said later that she'd never really managed to get over it, that it had stayed with her for years. That's it, it has to be. Maybe...." She twisted her robes in her hands, staring up at Malfoy as he neared her, an unconscious plea in her voice and her face. "Maybe there's still a little possession there, maybe this isn't _her_."

"Maybe you're too blind to pay attention to what's going on right under your nose. Despite your penchant for sticking it into everything. Or maybe you're just an idiot." He crouched in front of her, shaking his head at her offended gasp. "How could you not _notice_? She said she'd been at it for years." He extended his left arm, tapped the altered Mark. "W. For Weasley. Do you think she got tired of it and wanted you to catch her?" He gestured at the room around them, the curved walls, the heavy furniture. "Or do you think that maybe, just maybe, she wanted you to lead her to the man who gave her that diary and started her trip down Crazy Road?"

"Everyone thought your father was _dead_!" she cried, shoving his arm away.

"Everyone except whoever knew he was here. And I'm willing to lay bets that at least one of those people was a Weasley or Potter. Think her own husband would have kept that secret from her? She figured out how to call the Death Eaters together, everyone in sodding England knew where I was, all she was missing was my father! All she needed to know was where he could be found, and she could get that revenge she wanted so much! How'd she find that out, Granger, how do you think? Potter? Her family? _You_?"

Hermione opened her mouth to deny him, to refute his accusative tone, but nothing came out. No words could emerge, and she stared into space, shaking her head slowly. Molly's words, Giffin's words, Malfoy's words, it all flooded her mind - lure him out, use him as bait, have him followed - and she felt her gut clenching.

She remembered how tired Ginny had looked over the past few months, an exhaustion that she'd attributed to the baby. Her tendency to leave paperwork and files out in her flat, and how often she'd seen Ginny absently straightening up for her. The pins in the map in her office, the pattern she'd failed to see - villages near Quidditch matches played by the Harpies, villages Ginny could have visited without one person finding it odd. The day, just a week before Selwyn was killed and Malfoy received his first owl, that she'd been talking with Harry at the Burrow, in the kitchen, about Lucius Malfoy, and how she'd nearly stumbled over Ginny as she left, how she'd accepted Ginny's "Oh, sorry, James wanted his daddy" explanation so easily. Hermione's thoughts raced, frantic to find something that could disprove anything Malfoy had said, but everything only led to him being right. It was her fault, this mess was her fault.

Her silence stretched too long, and she realized it was true silence, too much silence. The screams and shouts outside had stopped, and Hermione held her breath, listening with her head turned, her ear pressed to the door. Silence. Too much of it.

Then came a soft scratching at the door and a low sing-song voice. "Hermione."

Ginny's voice.

"Hermione. I know you're in there. I know you've got Malfoy. Open the door and let me have him, Hermione. He's the only one left, and once I've finished with him, we can go home and have some tea. That'll be nice, won't it? You can play with James."

Hermione shoved her hands into her hair, gripping her temples. Ginny had to be stopped, had to be prevented from getting Malfoy, from killing again. That was her job, that was her project. The past five years of her life had been dedicated to hunting and tracking down the person responsible for murdering Death Eaters, and now she'd done it, she'd found the killer.

And capturing said killer was going to tear her world to pieces. Harry, Ron, Molly - everyone she cared about would be in the middle of destruction and loss if she stopped Ginny. She looked up, looked at the man kneeling in front of her with disquieted impatience in his eyes. If she stopped Ginny, _almost_ everyone she knew would be hurt. Except Malfoy.

If she didn't, Malfoy would die. Malfoy, _Draco_, the man she'd started to care about, the man she'd dreamt about, the man she'd argued and fought about and for, the man she'd rushed to protect because she couldn't bear the thought of losing him. If she saved him, she lost everything, and if she failed him, she lost more than everything.

The scratching noise came at the door again, and Hermione groaned. She needed to do something and she needed to do it quick. This wasn't a game, and she couldn't play by the rules anymore. She _hadn't_ been playing by the rules for weeks, not since Malfoy got involved. Not since she'd started falling for him, with his pale blond hair and his pale grey eyes, so much like his father, but so different.

_So much like his father._ Hermione took a deep breath. "Malfoy," she said quietly, getting to her feet and holding a hand out to him. "I have an idea."

***

It didn't take long for Ginny to get bored with scratching at the door, and she broke it open with a Blasting spell. When she stepped inside, mincing over the splintered wood, she found Hermione curled up in a chair against the far wall, with a glass of wine in her hand. Hermione gestured to a side table and another glass. "Have a drink, Ginny?"

Ginny scanned the room, peered into the corners that didn't exist, then slowly turned to look at Hermione. "Where is he?" She stepped closer to Hermione, wand up and ready. "Where's the world's last Death Eater?"

"Have a drink, Ginny. Celebrate a little. You did it." Hermione gripped the stem of her wineglass, then forced herself to relax her fingers. She knew her voice was shaking but hoped Ginny would attribute it to adrenaline. "You killed them all. Everybody but Dra--Malfoy." She cursed herself for the slip, but Ginny didn't seem to notice.

"Yeah, took care of them." Ginny came forward and took the wineglass off the table. She sipped at it, made a face, and perched on the edge of a chair facing Hermione. "Where's the pointy ferret?"

"Just ... first tell me why, Ginny. Why kill them all? MLE was tracking them, we had several in Azkaban. Why kill them? And why so many recently?"

Ginny smiled. "It's for James, silly. I took care of them so I could really care for _him_. Get a little revenge, make the world a better place for my children. "

Hermione felt her head throb, a shriek stifled in the back of her mind. "You realize," she said slowly as she put down her glass and locked her hands together to stop their shaking, "that's the same reason a lot of _them_ had for what they did. They wanted to mold the world in the shape _they_ thought was best for their children. You're doing the same thing they did."

Ginny nodded, taking another sip of wine. "I know. Maybe it's not the best way to go about it, maybe I didn't pick the most appropriate method - I mean, they certainly didn't do very well at it, but I did improve on their style quite a bit - but it's not as though I could have asked for help. Who would I have gone to? _Harry_? Honestly, Hermione, I thought you were the thinker of the group." Hermione shut her eyes and clutched her necklace as Ginny continued. "I had to step up my schedule. I lost so much time while I was pregnant with James, couldn't really go out and do my work, but I got a lot of planning done. I was actually thinking of giving it up, but then he was born and I saw his face, and everything became so clear. I knew what I needed to do, and how to do it, and I got right back to work." She took a long drink and laughed, a rapid, high-pitched laugh that was so familiar it made Hermione tremble. "And now it's over. They're all dead. All but one."

"What about Narcissa? She wasn't a Death Eater."

Ginny laughed again. "Oh, she was a happy accident, actually. I was coming for Malfoy, she saw me, saw the mask, thought I was her husband, so on and so forth. Couldn't let her stop me, you understand, and it just seemed more entertaining to stretch out Malfoy's death a little longer. I knew exactly where he was, after all, could come after him whenever I wanted."

Behind her, in the archway on the far side of the room, a shadow moved. Hermione wrung her hands in her robes, trying desperately to keep her eyes on Ginny's face and not over her head, tried to wait for their plan to start, for Malfoy to come out of the shadows and Stun Ginny. He'd go down, of course, with the band on his throat punishing him for the magic use, but it would be worth it. It would give them time. It would save him. And after what Ginny'd just said about his mother, Hermione was sure he'd consider any pain to be worth it all.

"Just that last one," Ginny said, setting her glass down with a clink and placing her hand on her stomach with a soft smile. "Just that last one, and I can get started on expanding the nursery."

Hermione's eyes widened and she gasped. Ginny shrieked with glee at the realization in her face. "Yep! Told you I was making a better world for my children. I had to hurry. Next one'll be along soon."

Behind Ginny, Malfoy stepped into the room, not from the archway, but from the shattered door. Hermione blinked, confused, then held her breath. There was no band around Malfoy's throat, his hair seemed to have grown several inches, and his face bore deep lines around his mouth and eyes. She gaped, her mouth moving without sound. Ginny stared at her, then leapt to her feet and spun around, wand pointed.

Ginny shouted a denial. "You're dead. I killed you, you're dead!"

Lucius stepped forward, his wand aimed. "I rather think not."


	10. Chapter 10

**TEN**

Draco watched from the archway, hidden in the shadows, as his father approached the two women. Draco wasn't sure who looked more shocked, Granger or Weasley, but both seemed frozen at the sudden appearance of a supposedly dead man.

When he'd thrown himself down by what he'd thought was his father's body, Draco had heard the slightest noise, felt the smallest movement. As he'd done so often in the past, Lucius had pretended, falsified, hidden. Draco hadn't had much time, hadn't been able to get much explanation before the fight started and curses flew in earnest, but when he'd stepped into the house and had seen the cracked mirror, he'd understood the rushed whisper his father had made. Weasley fired a curse, missed and hit the wall, cracking the plaster and mirror, and Lucius faked the hit. Convinced she'd killed him, Weasley had thrown his body outside and started taunting the Death Eaters.

There hadn't been time to plan, but Draco knew his father could come up with something if they drew Weasley away. He'd taken Granger's wand, cast the spell to disguise sound and movement, and the contact of their bodies had let the magic cover Lucius as well. The contact had also spread the punishing pain, and Draco had feared, for just a moment, that Granger had noticed a twitch from his father. He'd keened and writhed to cover it, clutching at her robes and she'd kissed him. Draco touched his mouth, still feeling her lips on his.

He'd been serious when he'd said they'd talk about it later, and he intended to keep that promise. The kiss had spoken of a connection between them that led to confusing, bewildering places in his mind, and he had to figure it out when there was time.

Right then, there wasn't. Weasley was raising her wand, Lucius was aiming his, and Draco stepped out of the archway, Granger's wand clenched in his hand. Weasley's aim wavered, snapping from Malfoy to Malfoy, and she staggered back a step, fetching up against Granger, who caught her by the shoulders. "You're dead," Weasley said in a tight, quavering tone. "You're dead, I killed you. I killed you once, I'll do it again!"

Two Malfoys and one Weasley all raised wands and fired at once. A red bolt, a green bolt, both shattered on the shield Draco threw into the center of the room. His inhibitor band flared and he hit his knees with a scream echoed by Granger, and by the time the pain faded and he could raise his head, Weasley was down, his father was kneeling with empty hands raised, and Granger was standing in the center of the room with three wands a sick expression. She turned to him, her face crumpled, and she wailed. "_Now_ what?"

Draco got to his feet with the aid of a chair, and he shuffled to Hermione's side, groaning with residual aches and pains. He patted her shoulder awkwardly, and she flung herself against his chest. Without thought, he wrapped his arms around her and held tight as she whimpered and poured out her troubles. He caught the words Ginny, baby, everyone, loss, murder, job, lose you, your father, lose you, can't. "I can't lose you," she finally murmured in a clear voice, raising her head and wiping tears off her cheeks. "I can't lose you. No matter how much it hurts Ginny or Harry or Ron or anyone. I'll think of something, but I can't lose you."

Draco bowed his head and kissed the corner of her mouth, tasting salt tears and dry wine on her lips. "We'll think of something," he whispered.

When he raised his head, he saw his father looking at them with a mix of revulsion and pride in his face. "I was right," Lucius said. "You _could_ change. Rather a lot, it seems."

Draco made a helpless gesture behind Granger's back and he started to speak, but Lucius held up one hand and he shut his mouth with a snap. He shook his head, looked down at Granger, patted her hair, and shrugged. "I finally found a reason."

Lucius looked at him and Granger for a long moment, looked at Weasley, unconscious on the floor, then pulled up his sleeve and looked at the altered Mark in his arm. "I may have an idea."

***

Draco tried, tried frantically and desperately, to sway Lucius, to shove away even the smallest hint of the plan he outlined. Granger, on the sofa to watch over the Stunned Weasley, looked at him with pleading eyes, though, and Lucius made the crucial blow. "I failed you years ago, Draco, failed to save you from the Dark Lord. I thought I'd lost you then, I thought I might lose you forever. I thought my entire world was going to be destroyed." He gestured at Granger without looking at her. "Miss Mudblood here is at the same brink, the same risk of losing everything in her life. With this, she won't. And, god help me, as much as it disgusts me, she won't lose you." He looked at Draco, his eyes sad. "And you won't lose her."

Draco gave up and Granger sent her otter Patronus. When MLE arrived, the bodies of the Death Eaters were laid out in a row outside the cottage, Weasley, under memory modification, was gratefully and tearfully thanking Granger for saving her life and her baby, and Lucius was at a desk, an Incarcerating hex holding him in place. In front of him sat an empty vial and a full confession.

_I, Lucius Malfoy, known and convicted Death Eater, confess under Veritaserum and in the presence of witnesses, that I have been responsible, over several years, for...._

His confession claimed the murders of the Death Eaters over the years, the riot at Azkaban, the altered shape in the Dark Marks - _M, for Malfoy_ \- every attack and killing in recent months. The only thing he refused to claim was the death of his wife, and Granger agreed to have it categorized in the records as a failed retaliatory attempt on the Malfoy family as a whole.

In the muddle of MLE officials, Aurors and hit wizards, Obliviators and representatives from the Office of Misinformation, Draco wandered out of the cottage and around back of it, to lean against the wall and have a cigarette. MLE was going to clean up, the Muggles in the village were going to have their memories modified and any evidence of curses, wizards, bodies, and spells would be removed.

And his father was going to Azkaban. Draco pressed his shoulders into the wall and bowed his head, closing his eyes against the smoke from his cigarette. It almost felt like he was sixteen again, when his father had gone to prison the first time and he'd taken on the mission that ultimately failed. He would have sacrificed himself for his family then, and his father was sacrificing himself for him now, and still the only thing he could think, the only thing that was clear in his mind was how grateful he was that he had Granger. "If a good wank and a kiss can count as _having_ someone," he muttered.

"It's a start, maybe," a voice said, and Draco opened his eyes, looking sideways to Granger, who stood nearby with her hands twisted in her robe sleeves. Her hair was askew and wild, there was a smudged patch of dirt and tear-streaks on her cheekbone, and her eyes were red and swollen. Draco knew right then he was lost, because she was beautiful, even like that. He thumped his head back against the wall and shook it until his hair fell into his eyes. "Well, it _is_," Granger said, and she moved up to stand beside him.

"That's not it," he said, flicking his cigarette into the grass. "It's ... well, all right, it _could_ be a start. If I wasn't me and you weren't you, then maybe." He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and sighed. "And if we hadn't just sent my father to prison so that _you_ wouldn't lose everything in your life. Wouldn't lose your friends or your job or your relationship, wouldn't have to turn Weasley in and destroy everything you've built over the past few years. Might kind of ruin that all if you ... keep looking at me that way."

He raised an eyebrow at her as she reached up and smoothed his hair back, pushing it out of his eyes with a quavering smile. "My relationship's been going downhill for a while. And I'm already going to lose my job, probably." She took his wrist, stepped in close, and pulled his arm around her shoulders. "Turns out that permitting you to evade your house arrest and _accompanying_ you, even, is sort of a violation of Ministry guidelines. I might get some leeway because I did manage to bring in a killer, but...." She shrugged and looked up to him. "But I don't mind. Even if I lose that, I'm not losing the important things."

Draco shook his head again and stared into the distance for a moment, wondering when everything had got so muddled and if he was ever going to figure it out. Then, for the second time that day, he gave up. He tugged her closer, pulling her against his chest and bending his neck to rest his cheek on the top of her head. "Won't be easy, you know. Not in the slightest."

"I like a challenge." Her fingers trailed across his neck, tapping on the inhibitor band. "Oh, and this. Giffin said he _might_ be able to see about getting it removed. Your contributions to the work on my case seems to warrant another look into yours." He raised up to give her a questioning look, and she smiled. "Oh, you were very helpful. You gave me several bits of information that led to solving this case. It's all going to be in my report."

Draco laughed, rolling his eyes. "So everything about this is fictitious, is what you're saying."

"Not entirely." She reached up to cup his cheeks and drew him down. "You promised we were going to talk about that kiss. Do you mind if we skip the talking and--" She kissed him.

-|-

She didn't lose her job. She didn't lose her friends. He - surprisingly enough, he told himself from time to time - didn't lose his sanity. They fought and argued and kissed and fought and made up and argued and kissed.

And when he stood beside her bed, stroking her hair and looking at the swaddled blankets she held, his small grey-eyed child in her arms, he realized he'd found much more than he'd lost. "Put you two in front of a mirror and it'd be tough to tell who was pointier, you realize. He looks just like his father," Hermione said, smiling up at him.

Draco grinned and bent to kiss her. "I know."


End file.
